hen President Obama moved into the White House,
he came with the promise of change and open dialogue as an alternative to George Bush’s ‘you’re
either with us or against us’ policy. Yesterday the editors-inchief of the Kuwaiti press got firsthand experience of that
change. US Ambassador Deborah Jones invited the press to
a lunch with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near
Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman. The lunch opened the
opportunity for the Kuwaiti press, Mr Feltman and
Ambassador Jones to exchange opinions on various issues in
the Middle East and America’s role in these issues.
Of course the Palestinian issue could not be avoided
whenever the Middle East is being discussed and our lunch
with Mr Feltman was no different. The Deputy Assistant
Secretary was genuine in conveying the message that the
US is all for a two-state solution. He also explained that the
US cannot dictate to either side what they can and can’t do
but it is negotiating with both sides in the hope of finding a
solution.
I would like to say that dialogue on all levels is a good
approach when trying to bring both sides together. However,
there is also the issue of trust, meaning that when a relationship has been tense for many years, don’t expect both sides
to suddenly trust each other and forget the past. Therefore,
with dialogue there has to be patience as well and the dialogue has to be renewed several times until some sort of
trust is gained between both sides. Then and only then
would dialogue be successful. This has pretty much been
the case with the Israeli and Palestinian issue where the
international community is being very patient and has been
carrying on with dialogues since 1967.
This patience over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is raising doubts over the international community’s commitment
to solving this crisis, looking at the fact that countries that
have defied and that are defying UN resolutions, such as Iraq
and Iran, have not enjoyed the patience that Israel is currently enjoying.
President Obama’s administration has its work cut out
when trying to prove that the US is fully committed to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and opening dialogues with
old foes such as Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Because it has to
change old mentalities and show that it is treating its ally
Israel on equal footing with its Arab allies. (See Page 4)

Yemen Houthis offer
truce to Saudi Arabia
hostilities in return, the rebels
would wage an “open war” on
the world’s top oil exporter.
Yemen’s central government has been fighting the
rebels on and off since 2004,
but the conflict intensified last
summer when Sanaa launched
Operation Scorched Earth to
quash the latest upsurge in violence. Saudi Arabia stepped
into the fray in November
when rebels seized some Saudi
territory, prompting Riyadh to
wage a major military offensive
against them. The conflict raging in the north has displaced
around 200,000 people, according to the United Nations.
Continued on Page 13

PORT-AU-PRINCE: A street vendor tries to keep the
crowd from stealing her goods on Sunday. — AFP

Bodies pile up as
Haiti begs for aid
PORT-AU-PRINCE: Haiti’s
prime minister begged donors
yesterday to back the rebuilding of his quake-hit country and
boost international aid as hundreds of thousands of people
fought for survival in the rubble. Nearly two weeks after the
worst recorded disaster in the
Americas killed at least
150,000 people, a conference of
foreign creditors in Montreal

150 FILS

Egypt down
Cameroon
to set up
Algeria
rematch

China denies
state role in
Google
cyberattacks

SANAA: The leader of
Yemen’s Shiite rebels yesterday offered a ceasefire to Saudi
Arabia and said his fighters
would withdraw from the kingdom’s territory to avoid more
civilian casualties. The
announcement by Abdul-Malik
Al-Houthi followed three
months of border fighting
between Shiite rebels and
Saudi forces who also used
their air force to bomb rebel
targets. “To avoid more bloodshed and to stop aggression on
civilians ... we offer this initiative,” Houthi said in an audio
recording posted on the
Internet. He warned that if
Saudi Arabia did not end its

NO: 14621

heard that it would take at least
10 years to rebuild the stricken
Caribbean nation.
As bulldozers cleared more
corpse-filled buildings in the
center of the flattened capital
Port-au-Prince,
Haitians
expressed both hope and skepticism about the emergency
meeting of donor countries in
Montreal.
Continued on Page 13

BAGHDAD: Faisal Hadi, 53, is assisted to a hospital after he was wounded in a
car bomb attack yesterday. (Inset) An image grab shows a still photograph
broadcast by the state-run Al-Iraqiya television channel showing Ali Hassan AlMajid before his execution yesterday. — AP/AFP

BAGHDAD:
Saddam
Hussein’s notorious cousin
and henchman “Chemical Ali”
was executed yesterday,
Iraq’s government said, eight
days after he was sentenced
to death for the 1998 gassing
of thousands of Kurds. Ali
Hassan Al-Majid was better
known by his macabre nickname and as the King of
Spades in the pack of cards of
“most wanted” Iraqis issued
by the US military in 2003,
and will forever be associated
with mass killings.
He was “executed by
hanging until death,” government spokesman Ali AlDabbagh said. “The execution
happened without any violations, shouting or cries of
joy,” in sharp contrast to
Saddam’s death on the gallows, he added. State television later aired two still photographs of Majid, in which he
was wearing an orange-red
jumpsuit and the first of
which clearly displayed his
face. The second picture
showed him on a platform,
with a black hood over his
head and with two men wearing balaclavas standing on
either side.
The execution, which was
welcomed by Kurdish victims,
came as three massive car
bombs targeting hotels
rocked central Baghdad,
killing at least 37 people and
wounding more than 100 in an
apparently coordinated but as
yet unclaimed attack. US
Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton said extremists were
trying to upend progress
toward democracy.
Continued on Page 13

Ethiopia jet crashes off Beirut
All 90 on board feared dead • Plane caught fire after takeoff
BEIRUT: An Ethiopian
Airlines plane carrying 90 people caught fire and crashed
into the sea minutes after taking off from Beirut early yesterday, setting off a frantic
search as passenger seats,
baby sandals and other debris
washed ashore. No survivors
had been found by nightfall,
but emergency workers recovered at least 34 bodies including two toddlers. The
cause of the crash was not
immediately known. Lebanon
has seen stormy weather
since Sunday night, with
crackling thunder, lightning
and rain.
“We saw fire falling down
from the sky into the sea,”
said Khaled Naser, a gas station attendant who saw the
plane go down around 2:30 am,
crashing into the frigid waters
of the Mediterranean that had
reached just 18 degrees
Celsius by yesterday afternoon. The Lebanese army
said in a statement the plane
was on fire shortly after takeoff. Lebanese President
Michel Suleiman said terrorism was not suspected in the
crash of Flight 409, which was
headed for the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. “Sabotage is
ruled out as of now,” he said.
Weeping
relatives
streamed into Beirut’s airport
to wait for news on their loved
ones. One woman dropped to

BEIRUT: Ethiopian women, relatives of passengers
of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed in the
sea, react upon their arrival at Beirut airport yesterday. — AP

her knees in tears; another
cried out, “Where is my son?”
Andree Qusayfi said his 35year-old brother, Ziad, was
traveling to Ethiopia for his job
at a computer company, but
was planning to return to
Lebanon for good soon. “We
begged him to postpone his
flight because of the storm,”
Qusayfi said, his eyes red from
crying. “But he insisted on
going because he had work
appointments.”
Zeinab
Seklawi said her 24-year-old
son Yasser called her as he
was boarding. “I told him, ‘God
be with you,’ and I went to
sleep,” Seklawi said. “Please
find my son. I know he’s alive
and wouldn’t leave me.”
At the Government
Hospital in Beirut, Red Cross
workers brought in bodies on
stretchers covered with wool
blankets as relatives gathered
nearby. Many people were
giving DNA samples to help
identify the remains of their
loved ones. One man identified his 3-year-old nephew by
the overalls the boy was
wearing. The Boeing 737-800
took off around 2:30 am and
went down 3.5 km off the
coast, said Ghazi Aridi, the
public works and transportation minister. “The weather
undoubtedly was very bad,”
Aridi told reporters at the airport.
Continued on Page 13

Israel doesn’t dare
strike Iran: Larijani
By Ahmad Saeid
KUWAIT: The speaker of the
Iranian parliament said yesterday that Israeli threats to
attack Iran’s nuclear facilities
are “empty talk”. “If they
dared to carry attacks against
Iran, they would’ve done that
already,” Ali L arijani said
after his arrival to Kuwait on
a two-day visit yesterday. “I
recommend that you don’t
pay attention to such comments,” he said. Larijani also
downplayed French President
Nicholas Sarkozy’s call to
place more sanctions against
Iran. “Instead of placing pressure on Israel for their abusive practices against people
in Palestine, the West tries to
divert attention to Iran,” he

said.
Larijani was in Kuwait on
an invitation from National
Assembly Speaker Jassem AlKhorafi, who headed the
diplomatic delegation at the
airport. “Iran and Kuwait
have enjoyed good ties for a
long time, even during ‘sensitive periods’,” Larijani said.
His Kuwaiti counterpart said
that the importance of the
visit is derived from the
importance of Iran in the
region. “Iran has a significant
role and good connections in
the region. We are always in
touch about the events taking
place in this region, and there
are negotiations between the
two parliaments too,” Khorafi
said.
Continued on Page 13

FM assures MPs on
Iraq border houses
By B Izzak
KUWAIT: Foreign Minister
Sheikh Mohammad Al-Sabah
moved yesterday to assure
MPs on Kuwait’s offer to build
houses for Iraqi farmers, saying that the number of these
houses is not more than 80 for
Iraqi farmers whose current
houses and land interfere with
Kuwaiti territory. The minister
was apparently responding to
criticism by several MPs over
his remarks that Kuwait has
offered to build the houses for
the
farmers.
Sheikh
Mohammad said that the Iraqi
farmers’ presence on the border constitutes a security liability for both countries.
The minister’s statements
came following a meeting with

the Assembly’s foreign relations committee during which
he briefed members about a
number of issues including the
outcome of the recent GCC
summit, the fighting in Yemen
and relations with Iran.
Rapporteur of the committee
MP Ali Al-Rashed told
reporters that the members
agreed to make a field visit to
the Iraqi-Kuwaiti borders along
with the foreign minister and
specifically to the area where
the Iraqi farmers are located.
The minister said that
Kuwait has asked Iraq that the
border area should be vacant in
order to maintain security ,
adding that Iraqi farmers are
currently living on Iraqi territory and not Kuwaiti.
Continued on Page 13

Karroubi recognizes
Ahmadinejad as prez
TEHRAN: Iran opposition
leader Mehdi Karroubi, who
had refused to accept
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection, revealed yesterday
in a major position shift that
he now recognised the hardliner as president. Karroubi’s
son, Hossein, told AFP about
his father’s new stance, making him the first opposition
leader to explicitly accept
Ahmadinejad’s victory in the
June 12 poll which returned
him to office for a second
term.
“I am still of the same
belief that the election was
unhealthy and massively
rigged. But since the
(supreme) leader (Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei) endorsed
(Ahmadinejad’s victory), I
believe that he is the head of
the government, meaning he
is the president,” Hossein
quoted his father as saying.
Hossein spoke to AFP when
asked to confirm an earlier
report by Fars news agency

Mehdi Karroubi
quoting his father as acknowledging Ahmadinejad to be the
president.
Fars asked Karroubi
whether he now recognises
Ahmadinejad as president.
The ex-speaker of parliament,
who won the fewest number
of votes in the June election,
replied: “I still maintain that
there were problems (in the
poll), but with regard to your
question, I should say that
Continued on Page 13

2

NATIONAL

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Sheikh Salem Al-Ali’s return welcomed

Cabinet approves
KAC privatization
KUWAIT: The cabinet, in its weekly meeting late
Sunday, tentatively decided to privatize the national airlines, the Kuwait Airways Corporation. The government, during a marathon session, reviewed results of
assessment of condition of the KAC on the basis of studies, conducted by specialized international consultancy
agencies. Managing Director of the Public Investment
Authority Dr Bader Mohammad Al-Saad, with presence
of the executive manager of the general reserves
department, Bader Ajeel Al-Ajeel, and the advisor of this
sector, Nouri Al-Salem, presented the executives with
the adopted assessment methods and the attained
results, on the basis of the tasking that had been granted to these consultancy houses.
Moreover, necessary steps for the implementation of
the law number 6 of 2008 regarding the transformation
of the KAC into a shareholding company were reviewed
during the session. Furthermore, the government discussed a recommendation by the committee of economic affairs regarding the privatization of the airways corporation, and tentatively approved a cabinet draft resolution with respect of the issuance of rules and executive
measures of the law number 6 of 2008.
The council also tasked the PIA to complete legal
procedures to transform the corporation into a shareholding Kuwaiti company under the name, the Kuwaiti
Airways Corporation, so it may undertake its tasks
according to the mentioned law. The cabinet also welcomed the return of His Highness Sheikh Salem Al-Ali
Al-Sabah, Head of the National Guards, to Kuwait next
Wednesday, while approving a bill on draft budgets of
ministries and government departments for FY 2010-

11. The cabinet, chaired by His Highness the Prime
Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad Al-Ahmad AlSabah, welcomed the return of Sheikh Salem following
his long treatment journey. The cabinet hoped Sheikh
Salem would enjoy lasting health under the leadership of
His Highness the Amir and His Highness the Crown
Prince, minister of state for cabinet affairs Roudhan AlRoudhan said in a statement after the meeting.
He said finance undersecretary Khalifa Hamada, his
assistant Abdulwahhab Al-Muzaini and senior officials
briefed the cabinet about the 2010-11 draft budget,
including the projected oil and non-oil revenues.
They have also noted how the draft budget would
tackle structural irregularities in the national economy,
said Al-Roudhan who added that the cabinet approved
draft budgets of ministries and government departments. A bill was referred to His Highness the Amir.
The cabinet, meanwhile, took note of a letter sent by
UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon to the Amir including the UN’s efforts to banning and regulating the excessive force of conventional weapons.
The cabinet approved a draft law on cultural, educational and scientific agreement between Kuwait and
Spain, and referred it to the Amir, said Al-Roudhan.
The government also approved bills concerning
agreement on preventing double taxation and evasion of
income tax and capital with Benin, double taxation prevention and evasion of income tax agreement with the
Philippines, a double taxation prevention and evasion on
income tax agreement with Mexico, in addition to an
agreement to preventing double taxation and income tax
and capital evasion with Armenia. — KUNA

local spotlight

The HRW report on Kuwait
By Muna Al-Fuzai

T

he rights of workers,
women, bedoons as
well as the freedom of
expression were the main
issues of concern that the
Human Rights Watch (HRW)
had detailed in its report
about Kuwait. This report did
not come as a big surprise as
it only helped shed light on most of the existing
issues. Some have been resolved while others
are still pending. Nevertheless, the report
should not be overlooked.
Now, I agree that the HRW is an organization
that champions the cause of human rights. It is
also necessary that allegations be leveled in a
just manner. Each issue raised by HRW should
be given an appropriate answer and clarification. I personally wish to see local officials give
the rights answers and analyze each accusation!
Now, of course, all matters addressed in the
report are of interest not only to citizens but to
expats too. The report also claimed that systemic abuse against marginalized population
were being carried out, although some improvements in Kuwait’s human rights record were
registered during the past year.
Now, I’m not sure of the improvements that
Kuwait has made in this area and the criteria
and statistics that this organization had followed. But the question is, if there has been an
improvement then why are accusations still
being raised? Why isn’t the level of improvement mentioned?
Regardless of whatever this report states

about Kuwait, there are three main elements to
be taken into consideration.
First, who are the real people who formulated this report and what exactly do they represent- themselves, their governments or their
personal ideas? What were their sources of
information? If it comprises individuals who are
not particularly appreciative about Kuwait, their
testimony is not completely reliable.
If it is government-aided, they should clarify
their governments’ stance. If it represents the
media then we should be careful , especially due
to the presence of large number of newspapers
in Kuwait. If the organization is about laws then
that point should be clearly mentioned.
I agree that several issues need to be
addressed, not by the HRW but by Kuwaitis
themselves. People who are not even Kuwaitis
should not be passing judgments about our society without watching the complete picture. The
fact is that Kuwait, like many Arab countries,
has its share of problems that may take years to
be resolved.
What about women’s rights? What rights are
they talking about? Women in Kuwait are lucky
to be entitled to receive all the rights they want.
However, if a woman here has decided to
become a victim of abuse by her father or husband then that is her own fault. It is certainly
none of HRW’s business.
We, like the rest of the world, do face problems. There will be a new dawn where the people will realize what Kuwait needs most .
muna@kuwaittimes.net

KUWAIT: The KJA delegation honored by the Social Reform Society included (from left) Editor at the Kuwait News Agency
Mona Shishter, Editor-in-Chief of Kuwait Times Abd Al-Rahman Alyan (on behalf of Badrya Darwish, General Manager of
Kuwait Times), a member of the Kuwait Journalists Association, columnist of Al-Qabas newspaper Sami Al-Nisf, Chairman of
the Kuwait Journalists Association Ahmad Behbahani, Board Chairman of the Social Reform Society Humoud Al-Roumi,
Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Al-Anba newspaper and the head of the journalist delegation to Gaza Adnan Al-Rashid, Dr. Isam AlFulaij from Al-Watan newspaper and an official of the Social Reform Society. — Photos by Joseph Shagrah

‘Social Reform Society’ honors KJA delegation to Gaza
KUWAIT: The Chairman of the
board of directors of the Social
Reform Society (SRS), Humoud
Al-Roumi has praised the
efforts made by the Kuwait
Journalists Association (KJA)’s
delegation that recently visited
the Gaza Strip. The SRS’s
International Mercy Committee
recently organized an honoring
ceremony at KJA’s headquarters with the attendance of
media persons interested in the
organization’s activities. “What
our journalists did during that
visit was not coincidental. It
was a manifestation of heightened human feelings and genuine Arab traditions that the
delegation and Kuwaiti people
enjoyed,” said Al-Roumi. In a
statement he made on the occasion, he pointed out that the
Palestinian cause was currently
on top of the world’s priorities
and that this called for both governmental and public support.
Al-Roumi also emphasized
the religious side of the cause.
Palestine is the birthplace of the
world’s greatest religions. “It
has the first of the two holy
mosques that Muslims face during prayers, the third of the two
holy mosques after Kaaba and
the Prophet’s mosque and the
destination to which the holy
Prophet (PBUH) was carried on
the night of Israa’ and Me’raj.
Notably, KJA’s delegation
paid a visit to the Gaza Strip in
the beginning of January. The
delegation included KJA’s
Treasurer and Al-Anbaa’s
Deputy Editor-In-Chief, Adnan
Al-Rashid as delegation president, Al-Qabas writer Sami AlNisf, Dr. Essam Al-Flaij ( AlWatan), Mona Shishter, KUNA’s
Editorial Manager and the
Director General of Kuwait’s
English daily, Kuwait Times,
Badriya Darwish.
During the visit, the delegation met with various official
and public figures. They also
visited projects funded by the
people of Kuwait that were built
under the supervision of SRS
International
Mercy
Committee’s regional office in
the Gaza Strip. The delegation
also visited the Kuwait

Specialized Hospital that is valued
at $335,000 that has a 16,000 bed
capacity. At least 1,200 surgeries
are conducted annually.
The delegation also visited a
large farm including 30,000 palm
and various fruit trees that had
been planted as a contribution
from the Kuwaiti people so that
residents from the Gaza Strip
achieve food security.
Moreover, the delegation took
part in distributing food parcels to
hundreds of needy families in
Zaitoon (Olive) neighborhood,

Gaza Strip. It’s also noteworthy to
say that, through its regional office
in the Gaza Strip, SRS’
International Mercy Committee
has been doing a lot to reduce the
suffering of the Palestinian people
through agricultural and medical
projects, financial aids, digging
wells, building bakeries, monthly
sponsorship of families and
orphans, seasonal projects such as
Eid sacrifices , school bags, reconstruction projects. The committee
plans to repair 1,000 destroyed
homes in 2010.

‘Cooperation important for
sustainable development’
By Rawan Khalid
KUWAIT: Cooperation is important to achieve complete coordination between countries to
achieve sustainable development, said
Dr. Salah AlMuthahe, General Director of
Environment Public Authority.
He was speaking during the
opening of the 25th meeting of
the Coordination Environment
Committee (CEC) at the Gulf
Cooperation Council level at the
Sheraton Hotel yesterday. It is
considered a preparatory meeting for the Gulf Environment
Meeting which will be hosted in
Kuwait on May 2010.
Al-Muthahe also added that
more work is needed to preserve
the environment at all levels to
achieve goals. “The GCC leaders had formulated policies and
principles to protect the environment during their sixth summit
that was held in Muscat. It
marked the beginning of environ-

mental work that were translated
by the environmental officials at
GCC states into plans and programs of action,” Al-Muthahe
concluded. Dr. Abdullah Ben
Oqlaa Environment Secretariat,
General Assistant for Human and
Environment Affairs spoke about
the results yielded as a result of
cooperation between countries
over the past year. It has taken
steps to prevent the spread of
radiation. The GCC countries
emphasized commitment to the
United Nations Convention on
Climate Change and the Kyoto
Protocol in addition to several
achievements that were made
during previous sessions.
“These achievements cannot
be ignored. Some of the problems and obstacles present are in
the field of cooperation work.
Some leaders are trying to expedite work, push cooperation
work forward with the hope that
work achieved will attain a good
level,” Dr. Abdullah added.

NATIONAL

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

3

in my view

The ‘lucky’ nationals

T

he statement by Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Sheikh
Mohammad Al-Sabah about building suitable homes for Iraqi
farmers on the borders, as well as a Kuwaiti hospital in Basra
is totally correct, writes Abdullah Al-Misfer in Al-Jarida. Sheikh
Mohammad has saved us the trouble of looking for ways to spend
the surplus money that we have, and don’t know where or on who
to spend it!
After years of hard and dedicated work, we in Kuwait have now
reached the lap of luxury, and the simple citizen’s life has become
complicated because of the many services presented to him. If we
look at the health field, which we’ve often commented on the shortcomings of in recent years, it is now very well organized and of high
quality. One need only look at the buttons installed in every home
by the government to enable us to order what we want. As soon as
the simple citizen feels that he may be suffering from the flu, he can
simply push the button and moments later two good-looking young
blonde nurses appear in front of him carrying red roses and telling
him they’ll do whatever it takes to help. A few minutes later, the
doctor arrives, conducts a full examination, then gives the citizen
medicine of the best quality.
As for education, all the citizen has to do is to press the button
relevant to his son’s or daughter’s educational stage to have a
group of school administrators and teachers arrive at his house to
register the prospective pupil in school and organize his or her educational journey from the elementary stage all the way to graduation
from university. In fact, the government provides him with a driver
to take the boy to school and a maid to run his affairs... Did not I tell
you that we’ve reached a great stage in our luxurious lives these
days purely through the efforts of my beloved government...?
As for housing, I do not want to talk about the stage we’ve
reached so that other countries will not jinx us. While still in the
womb our children find out that the government has already prepared their marital home in readiness for their moving in and all
they have to do, once born, is to visit the house occasionally to
supervise the decor and select the ceramics so that when the time
comes to get married the house will be totally furnished and ready,
with the young man or woman spending their first and most important night in their life in the house their “mother government” had
prepared for them.

Lawyer slams Co-op head
KUWAIT: Attorney Hesham AlRefaei has responded robustly
to the denials issued by the CEO
of the Rawdha and Hawally
Cooperative Society of AlRefaie’s accusations of violations by Co-op management
board members there.
Al-Refaie was speaking after
Ali Al-Anbaei, the Co-op CEO,
condemned him for submitting
an official complaint to the
Ministry of Social Affairs and
Labor in which the lawyer
alleged financial misdemeanors
by board members.
Al-Refaie said that he had
made the complaint on behalf of
Rawdha and Hawally Co-op
shareholders and were fully supported by documentation provided by them, which had been
submitted to the ministry for

examination, reported Al-Qabas.
The lawyer stated that AlAnbaei could not refute the allegations against the board members, adding that he had followed all the correct legal procedures in submitting his complaint.
Al-Refaie further asserted
that the Co-op head had failed to
respond satisfactorily to the
points laid out in the complaint,
launching a counter action
emphasizing his “commitment
to protect Kuwaiti families’
interests” in order to avoid
doing so.
The lawyer said that instead
of criticizing the complaint, AlAnbaei should be meeting the
responsibilities of his position
by addressing the complaint’s
points.

Drainage system is being installed here.

Where is the way to your flat? Where can you park your car?

Maidan Hawally riddled with holes

No end in sight for ‘digging’
By Ben Garcia
KUWAIT: Have you ever been to or at least
visited Maidan Hawally recently? Maidan
Hawally is a small but quiet neighborhood that
lies close to Salmiya. Like other locations in
Kuwait, Maidan Hawally (wedged between the
Fourth Ring Road and Baghdad Street) is riddled with digging/excavation holes. These
make residents’ lives difficult and miserable
for some. Expatriates complained of the jarring
din that emanates from heavy equipments and
a barrage of metal barricades that damage cars
and automobiles. They also complained of dangerous manholes that are not filled in after
undertaking digging and excavation activities.
“They destroyed roads and leave them open to
all kinds of danger. Sometimes, car accidents
take place here, but most of the time, impatient
motorists get into fights on the road because
they want to go first. This situation is really
sad and a terrible thing,” said a visibly frustrated expatriate. “What kind of treasures are they
hunting for in front of our flats? They do it
(the work) early in the morning and even late
into the night. It’s okay, if the purpose was
really to make us feel better afterwards, but
they aren’t. Besides, continuous dredging
keeps my children and me awake,” she complained.

The frustrated expat went on to explain, “I
just want them to explain to us about the excavation. Why does it take time and why doesn’t
it ever end? They’ll open the road one day and
cover it the next day. The following day another group (of people from the Municipality will
come and open the same holes that were
opened once and covered with sand.) It’s been
a cycle, and the funny thing is that it never
ends.”
Only the Ministry of Public Works,
Municipality and the Ministry of Electricity
and Water can explain why it has been happening. They are ready to answer things. An official familiar with the ministry’s bureaucracy
explained, “You better stop complaining!
That’s the way we do it in Kuwait,” he quipped.
“But I’ll tell you something; the reason why
things are happening was because no proper
coordination was achieved between concerned
ministries. The Public Works Department will
repair streets and eventually, the Municipality
will come to fix things afterwards. The
Ministry of Water will upgrade your drainage
system as well-so they dig up a big hole in your
place. Once again, here comes the Ministry of
Electricity pretending to increase electricity
voltage and they install some pipes and wires
underground. That’s how it works, is that
clear?”

Marlins prepare for trip
to Iraq and Kuwait
MIAMI: Florida Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez
has packed a dozen balls and a glove for the organization’s upcoming tour of Iraq and Kuwait.
“You never know. Maybe we’ll do a little
scouting trip while we’re there,” Gonzalez said
with a chuckle Friday. The more serious goal is to
spread some goodwill among the troops. Joining
Gonzalez will be NL Rookie of the Year Chris
Coghlan, catcher John Baker, president of baseball
operations Larry Beinfest and four members of
the team’s Mermaids dance crew.
The group flies Sunday from Washington to
Kuwait. The Marlins say the weeklong trip, sponsored by Armed Forces Entertainment, is the first
of its kind for a major league club since the Iraq
war began.
The Marlins said they’ll be ready to play catch,
pass out souvenirs or share stories about life in
the majors - whatever helps the troops take their
minds off the war. Gonzalez conceded he’s a little
anxious. “We’re not going to Disney World,” he
said.
“The percentage of stuff that can happen is
slim. But there is some nervousness on my part.”
Coghlan and Baker both have relatives with military backgrounds. Coghlan’s brother spent four
years with the Marine Corps in Iraq before returning to the United States, where he’s now enrolled

in junior college. “This trip isn’t for us, but when
we walk away we’ll probably get more out of it
than we ever thought we would,” Coghlan said.
“Those guys over there are the real heroes.
I’m able to fully understand that with my own
brother, the closest person in my life, putting his
life on the line.”
Baker’s family includes a grandfather who
served in World War II and two cousins recently
retired from the Marine Corps.
He said he has received much positive feedback from relatives about making the trip to visit
the troops. “Just being a civilian, not even a baseball player, and heading over to see these men and
women is a positive thing,” Baker said.
“It brings a slice of home and America to
them.” The Marlins have few details regarding
their itinerary, and Gonzalez joked it’s classified.
But Coghlan said he received a scouting report
from his brother about what to expect. “We don’t
know exactly where we’re going. It’s still confidential for security purposes,” Coghlan said. “But
he said, ‘More than likely you’re going to go to the
bases. It’s going to be real safe.’ He said, ‘You’ll be
amazed to realize how supportive they are and
thankful for you coming.’ He said, ‘They just want
to take their minds off fighting.”‘ — AFP

Man dies of drug overdose
KUWAIT: A citizen in his 20’s was found dead in
his home in Salwa as a result of a drug overdose.
His family members placed an emergency call
after they found him lying unconscious in his
room. Police and paramedics responded to the call
and discovered he had died before they arrived.

Investigations revealed that the blaze started in
the kitchen where the maid was located at the
time. The fire’s location would have made it
almost impossible for her to escape. A case was
opened and investigations are underway to determine the cause of the fire.

Fatal accident
A Pakistani truck driver was killed after a car
accident on Salmi street. Police and rescue teams
responded to the emergency and freed the driver
from the wreckage. He was announced dead at the
scene of the accident. Police are further investigating the incident.

Bootlegger held
Farwaniya police arrested an Asian man for
selling alcohol. He was found in possession of
dozens of bottles filled with liquor and ready for
sale. The arrest occurred after the man was pulled
over while on his way to deliver some alcohol to a
customer. He was taken to the proper authorities.

Maid dead in fire
An Asian maid was burned to death after a fire
occurred inside her sponsors’ home in AlQairawan. Firefighters, police and rescue teams
responded to the emergency and discovered the
maid’s body while putting out the flames.

Residency violators caught
Police arrested 140 expatriate men and women
on charges of violating residency and labor laws.
The arrests occurred after police raided 30 apartments in eight buildings where the lawbreakers
were hiding. They were all taken to the General
Department of Criminal Investigations.

Egyptian found dead
By Hanan Al-Saadoun
KUWAIT: The dead body of a 35-year-old
Egyptian man was discovered in his residence in
Farwaniya. The body was removed for autopsy.
Eleven injured
A 38-year-old Kuwaiti man was rushed to Jahra
Hospital when he suffered a heart attack after
being a car crash in the area.
In a separate accident a 67-year-old Kuwaiti
man sustained head injuries, while a 25-year-old
compatriot complained of chest pain and a 43year-old suffered a suspected broken leg in a car
crash in Rai. All were taken to Sabah Hospital.
In an accident on Shuaiba Port Road, a 28-yearold Moroccan woman suffered fractures to her
arms and legs. She was taken to the Amiri
Hospital.
In another incident, two Kuwaitis, aged 36 and
37, were taken to hospital after suffering deep

gashes to their legs in a car accident in Kuwait
City.
Meanwhile, two 35-year-old expatriates, an
Egyptian and an Indian, suffered head injuries in a
crash near Kaifan Exchange. Both were rushed to
hospital.
In another accident, a 21-year-old Kuwaiti man
suffered cuts to his hands and complained of neck
pain, while a 15-year-old compatriot suffered a
possible knee injury following a collision on the
Gulf Road near Seif Palace. Both were taken to
Amiri Hospital.
Thighbone broken
An eight-year-old Kuwaiti boy suffered a broken thighbone when he fell from a high building in
Fahad Al-Ahmad area. He was taken to Adan hospital. Meanwhile, a 55-year-old Egyptian man also
suffered a broken thighbone when he fell from a
height while carrying out work at the Ministry of
Interior. He was taken to Mubarak Hospital.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

US official urges more
GCC support for Iraq
US ambassador hosts lunch for acting secretary, chief editors
KUWAIT: A senior US official said that the United
States is not happy with the
Gulf Cooperation Council
(GGC) countries policy
towards integration with
Iraq. The official added that
when GCC countries complain that Iraq is turning
into Iran it is very disappointing. He said that Iraqis
are very proud of their heritage and that GCC countries should be there to
remind them of their connection to the Arab world.
The US Embassy in
Kuwait yesterday hosted
the visiting Acting Assistant
Secretary of Near Eastern
Affairs Jeffery Feltman at a
casual lunch. Also in attendance were chief editors of
local papers in Kuwait. US
Ambassador to Kuwait,
Deborah K Jones, hosted
the lunch and also participated in the discussion.
Jeffery Feltman started
the discussion by describing
what he has been doing with
his time in the region. “We
left Washington DC with
the Vice President [Joe
Biden] to Baghdad. We
stayed an extra day after the
Vice President left in order
to continue our conversations with the Iraqis. The
Secretary of State [Hillary
Clinton] and the Vice
President wanted to make
sure that we came to
Kuwait afterwards,” he continued.
“We have a long, close
friendship with Kuwait, and
we want to make sure that
we keep in close touch with
Kuwait about our dialogue
with the Iraqis. We know
how sensitive the issue is
and we want to make sure
that you understand what
our commitment to Iraq
means.
We want you to understand that our commitment
to Kuwait will not be compromised with what we are
doing in Iraq. We will also
be going to Riyadh to talk to
the Saudis -its actually my
first bilateral trip to Saudi
Arabia. I’ve visited Kuwait
several times,” he said.
“When asked about the
situation in Yemen, he
responded by addressing
the country’s security and
development troubles.
“You cannot address the
security
challenges
in
Yemen
without
also
addressing
development
and government challenges
there,” he said. “Look at the
challenges Yemen faces;
Houthies and Al-Qaeda in
the north, but also a population that will double by
2038. They are running out
of water, they are running
out of oil, and the govern-

KUWAIT: Al-Nisf shaking hands with Feltman at
the presence of the US ambassador, Abd AlRahman Alyan and Dr. Ali Al-Tarrah.

ment is not able to develop
and deliver services to the
entire country. You can’t
solve the security issue
without facing the development challenge. The Yemen
meeting called for by
[Britain’s Prime Minister]
Gordon Brown is to talk
about all these things
together,” he stressed.
Feltman then returned to
the discussion on Iraq and
the country’s potential as a
regional influence. “I think
we all look at Iraq as a potentially [strong] country and
that is a sensitive issue here
[in Kuwait]. What’s interesting is when we talk to the
Iraqis their perception of
their country is different
from the perception most of

Kuwait.”
Feltman underscored the
United State’s awareness of
what happened in Kuwait
and said the country is proud
of the partnership we have
with Kuwait. “Iraqis know
very well how firmly we are
committed to Kuwait’s independence,”
he
said.
“Nevertheless,
we
are
encouraged by the fact that
the Iraqi officials we spoke
to privately emphasize their
understanding that they
need to have a positive relationship with Kuwait.”
He pointed out that raising sensitive issues during
an election season is never a
good idea. “The United
States remains committed to
work with you and the Iraqis

us have. When one looks at
Iraq from the outside, as a
potential power house,
Iraqis themselves envision
their neighbors, Turkey,
Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia,
as playing too large of a
role.”
“I think Kuwait deserves
all of our applause,” Feltman
said when the conversation
turned toward the Iraqi invasion of 1990 and comments
made by current Iraqi government officials about
Kuwait’s
sovereignty.
“Kuwait hosted the governor of Basra, and received
many Iraqi leaders,” He
pointed out.
“We believe that it is well
overdue for the Iraqis to
send an ambassador to

through the technical issues,
but let us wait until after the
elections,“ he said
When asked about a
recent statement made by
US President Barak Obama
regarding the situation in
Palestine, Feltman responded by pointing out the importance of returning to negotiations.
“[US Senator George]
Mitchell has a good talent in
negotiations, as he proved in
northern Ireland. I know the
disappointment that people
felt when we were unable to
get the settlement freeze.
We believe the Israelis
should impose a settlement
freeze, and this is our policy,
but we did not set that,” he
said.

Humanitarian side of the issue ignored

Kuwait special needs bill
becoming ‘too politicized’
By Ahmad Saeid
KUWAIT: Representatives of public service organizations concerned with providing for
the people with special needs in Kuwait said that the special needs bill is becoming
increasingly politicized. They claimed that this has diverted attention away from the
humanitarian side of the issue. Their statements followed a seminar organized by a
group of NGOs, known as ‘Forces of 11/11,’ on the premises of the organization Umbrella
for Kuwaiti Action, in Shuhada on Sunday evening. Naser Al-Shleimy, Deputy Director
of the Kuwaiti Society for Evaluating Parliamentary Performance, said that the group of
NGOs decided to adopt the issue of the special needs law.

On the sad demise of her father.
May His Soul Rest In Peace

“The NGOs decided to offer help to public service
organizations for humanitarian reasons because the
issue is being constantly subjected to political
maneuvering between the government and the
National Assembly,” he said.
Representatives of the group of NGOs criticized
the government for not attending the parliamentary
session designated for the second hearing of the law.
The speakers urged the government to fulfill their
responsibilities toward people with special needs.
Ali Al-Thouayni, Deputy Head of the Disabled
Affairs Follow up Society, urged everyone, including
NGOs, to leave the issue of the disabled out of their
‘playground.’ “We have been kept aside in this regard
for a long time,” he said. “We have already drafted a
plan and handed it to all members of Parliament, but
it was also ignored.”
Al-Thouayni added that it is extremely necessary
to concentrate on pivotal issues while deliberating on
the disabled law. “The definition of the disabled is
very important. We’ve seen an inflated budget for the

disabled that is going to people who are not disabled
and who only managed to be listed because of their
connections,” he explained. Head of Special Needs
Society, Ayed Al-Shemmery, said that one of the
areas of disagreement between the government and
the National Assembly (NA) is who should run the
disabled authority. The fact that the proposed law
provides coverage for bedoons who are handicapped
is a further point of difference between the two
groups, he added.
Hamad Al-Merry, representative for the Hearing
Disabled Society, said that the law has fallen into a
larger argument between the Government and
National Assembly and that it is at the expense of disabled people. “Kuwait does not care about the issues
of the disabled or their families,” he said.
“What happened is a sad and frustrating thing for
disabled people, especially considering the law has
taken years of discussion and deliberating. We genuinely hope that the session on Feb 2 will not meet
the same destiny,” Al-Merry concluded.

NATIONAL

6

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Press freedom in peril

Proposed government
amendments criticized

Attorneys criticize proposed amendments
KUWAIT: The audio-visual
amendment issue is still earning the attention of many,
including people on the local
legal scene. Several lawyers
have asserted that imposing
stricter penalties on the freedoms of expression with these
new amendments will be a clear

violation to the constitution,
reported Al-Qabas.
Attorney Fahad Al-Ajmi said
that while there are cases
where journalists and other
media personnel have been
irresponsible in their publications that should not be used to
justify stricter media penalties.

He said the actions will not
address the problem and compared the proposed amendments to “painkillers that cannot cure a disease.”
Al-Ajmi said that the Cabinet
is going in the opposite direction of the global trend to lift
restrictions on journalists. He

described the suggested penalties as “an unpromising development” and stated that the
penalties silence people and
jeopardize freedom and democracy.Attorney Adel Qarban
described freedom as the base
of the democratic system. while
he expressed a belief that free-

doms should be organized by
the law he said that it should
not be used as a tool to suppress freedoms.
He criticized the stricter
penalties suggested in the proposed amendments and said
that the bill would limit the
freedoms that the constitution

guarantees. He questioned the
real intention behind limiting
journalists freedom of expression and also agrees that it is a
threat to democracy.
Attorney Mazied Al-Yousuf
said that the media is an excellent tool to monitor the violations committed by governmen-

tal directorates and personalities. He added that it can also
be used to observe negative
trends in society and protect a
country from flaws.
Al-Yousuf explained how
freedoms in the media were
protected by the current audiovisual law by eliminating forms

of pre-monitoring of the media.
He added that this original law
was acknowledged by the Arab
Human Rights Organization
who described it as a step
toward supporting freedoms of
opinion and expression and a
move in the right direction for
Kuwait.

kuwait digest

Ministry incompetence
reaches new heights
n introducing amendments to the audio-visual
law, the Ministry of
Information should take great
care to ensure justice and
equality throughout the legislation and in the enforcement
of these laws, writes
Abdulaziz Al-Anjari in AlQabas.
I believe in this case, however, that the ministry is not
entitled to take decisions of
this magnitude, simply due to
its history of self-contradictory decisions, misdemeanors
and the remaining suspicions
of its waste of public funds.
All these factors mean that
the ministry should not be eligible to introduce amendments to the audio-visual law
or to enforce monitoring on
others. Further supporting
this argument is the extensive list of violations committed by the ministry in the
past, including mismanagement of the payment of
allowances to state TV and
radio stations’ employees,
paying for work to be carried
out without receiving prior
Central Tenders Committee
(CTC) approval and broadcasting shows before signing
the contracts allowing them
to do so, resulting in them
having to pay more than the
figures given in the contracts.

I

All these incidents demonstrate the ministry’s incompetence and inability to
achieve fairness.
Among the new amendments, the information ministry is seeking to enforce the
pre-censorship of material
before broadcasting or publication in all the country’s
broadcast and written media.
Considering that Kuwait has
18 daily newspapers and 350
magazines, along with 12
satellite TV channels, how
exactly would a comprehensive pre-censorship system
be implemented, especially by
a body which has already
proved its absolute ineptitude? In all honesty, I find the
proposed amendments laughable and would find them even
more so if they were actually
introduced since it would be
virtually impossible for the
ministry’s current officials to
monitor the hundreds of
media items in the manner
proposed. That being said, I
feel quite sure that should the
amendments be approved,
this would be immediately
spark outrage from media
workers and political activists
and protests to force those
responsible for rushing the
amendments through to take
an even faster step to abort
them.

Good morning pen!

Lawmaker applauds jail omission from amendments
KUWAIT: A member of the educational committee of the National
Assembly MP Dr Ali Al-Omair
applauded the Cabinet’s decision to
remove the jail term penalty from
the list of amendments proposed on
the audio-visual law. He described it

as ‘a step in the right direction,’ and
said that it would help achieve more
compromise on the issue.
Furthermore, Al-Omair indicated
that in the committee’s meeting
scheduled to be held today
(Tuesday) the amendments will not

be discussed. This is mostly owing
to the fact that the Cabinet failed to
refer them officially to the committee for discussion.
He further indicated that during
the meeting only proposals made by
MPs on issues pertinent to the

Kuwait University and the Public
Authority of Applied Education and
Training’s (PAAET) will be discussed, reported Al-Watan
Meanwhile, Al-Amir asserted
that the State’s development plan
should gain approval from the

Environment Public Authority, similar to those received from the Audit
Bureau and the Fatwa and
Legislation Department. He further
added that the EPA should be consulted before proceeding with any
housing project.

Sheikh Ahmad Al-Abdullah is playing with fire
laying certain games can alter
the player’s mind, inspiring
him or her to more serious
ideas, whether in writing articles,
stories or poetry, painting or merely
studying a subject, writes Jaafar AlRajab in Al-Rai.
My own two favorite games are
Monpoly and Risk, which I invite
everyone to try and find out the

P

pleasures of for themselves.
Unfortunately, however, the information minister is playing a very different kind of game, a vile sectarian one,
as he is accustomed to doing whenever he is threatened with a grilling
motion to cover up his misdemeanors
whenever he feels his position is at
stake.
Let’s recall that Sheikh Ahmad Al-

Abdullah has always played on sectarianism in every ministerial position
he has assumed.
Only two weeks after the controversial Saudi cleric Mohammad AlUraifi was banned from entering
Kuwait to avoid sectarian troubles,
the minister broadcast a lecture by
Al-Uraifi on the state’s official TV
channel, for all the world as if Sheikh

Ahmad Al-Abdullah were making fun
of all the senior officials’ advice.
Some might claim that Sheikh
Ahmad Al-Abdullah had no idea about
the broadcast, but I assert that he
knew and that he even gave verbal
instructions to broadcast the lecture.
I know that the minister would, of
course, agree with what was said,
knowing that some MPs would hail

the airing of the broadcast and thank
him for airing it. But does Sheikh
Ahmad Al-Abdullah really believe
that he will be able to beguile other
MPs? I don’t believe they’re that naive. I once described Sheikh Ahmad
Al-Abdullah as the minister of fires and now he’s playing with fire and
wants to burn the whole country,
simply in order to keep his job.

Press law

ent

‘T

committed,’ he added.
Furthermore,
Al-Hajri
speculated about writers’
opinion would have if the
Parliament passed the suggested amendments and
pointed out that this would
put many pens (writers) to
rest.
‘I doubt that any honest MP who believes in
the 1962 Constitution
would approve of such
amendments and laws,’ he
added.
He expressed optimism that the amendments would be rejected
as many MPs already disagreed
with
them.
Moreover, Al-Hajri noted
that every now and then,
international
reports
would hail the press freedom that Kuwait enjoys.
‘This would make it even
harder and more embarrassing for the government if these unjust laws
are passed,’ he concluded.

nm

he 1962 Constitution guarantees
the right to criticize others without insulting them. It also allows us
to express ourselves in the
written and spoken form.
This is something that the
Ministry of Information
has totally ignored.
‘It has formulated laws
that are restrictive and
oppress the freedom of
expression,’
wrote
Mubarak Mohammed AlHajri in his Al-Rai column.
He pointed out that the
ministry has previously
passed laws that have not
been enforced. More stifling laws only point
toward the fact that freedom is dying in Kuwait.
‘If put into practice, the
present laws are more than
enough but the ministry
officials are ignoring them
and this gave radicals the
impression that they could
get away with offenses

r
Gove

Parliament
Al-Qabas

NATIONAL

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

KUWAIT: US Ambassador to Kuwait Deborah K Jones (center), Executive
Director of ABCK and Kuwait Times columnist Muna Al-Fuzai (left) and PR
executive Mohannad Al-Ahad in a group picture at the Kuwait Times booth
during the ABCK celebration on Sunday. — Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat

US Ambassador to Kuwait Deborah K Jones
delivers a speech during the event.

ABCK holds 25th anniversary celebration

ABCK board member
Gregg Stevens gives a
speech.

Chairman of KGL
Holding Dr. Ali Dashti
delivers a speech during the ceremony.

Chairman of Middle
East Chamber of
Commerce (MECACC)
John Habib gives a
speech.

KUWAIT: The American
Business Council of Kuwait
(ABCK) celebrated its 25th
anniversary on Sunday,
January 24, 2010 at the
Radisson Blu Hotel’s Grand
Hashmi II Ballroom.
Guests at the event
included an array of prominent VIPs from Kuwait and
elsewhere in the Gulf region.
ABCK board member
Gregg Stevens gave the
opening address, which was
followed by speeches from
the US Ambassador to
Kuwait Her Excellency
Deborah K. Jones and Dr. Ali
Dhasti, the Chairman of KGL
Holding.
John Habib, the chairman
of the Middle East Chamber
of Commerce (MECACC),
also delivered some words of
congratulations
on
the
ABCK’s silver anniversary,
praising the development and
progress that it brought to
the country over the recent
years.
The celebration also hosted an exhibition by the
ABCK’s corporate membership, with the sponsors of
the prestigious event including Ahmad and Ghazal
General Trading Company,
Kuwait Resources House
(KRH), Gulf Bank, Al Twaijri
& Partners Law Firm, Kuwait
Times and POSTA plus.

ABCK board member Gregg Stevens (center) and guests.

Sheila and Lionel Gittens, the Head of the American General Trading
Company and other guests attend the ceremony.

international experts will train Kuwaiti physicians on the latest treatments, he pointed out,
stressing that such visits would strengthen
cooperation between Kuwait and international
health centers and would play a major role in
the exchange of expertise.
He said that during his meeting with
Canadian doctors, he was briefed on programs

in the news
Teachers plan handicrafts expo
KUWAIT: With the aim of honing the
skills of retired women and housewives
and providing them with the opportunity
to showcase their creativity and art, a
group of female pensioners from the
Kuwait Teachers Society (KTS) will
launch their Fourth Annual Handicrafts
Exhibition on Thursday. It will be held
between January 28 and 30 at the
Society’s headquarters in Al-Dasma
under the patronage of Sheikha Sheikha
Al-Abdullah Al-Khalifa Al-Sabah. The
Head of the Club, Fatima Al-Awadhi Fatima Al-Awadhi
urged all retired women to participate in
the event and announced that an open invitation be made available to
all women. It will remain open from 9:30 am till 12:00 pm and from
4:30 pm until 8:30 pm. Attendance will be restricted to female visitors. Meanwhile, the society announced that it will be holding its 7th
Annual Tourism Festival between February 3 and 10th.

Correction
In the article “HRW slams treatment of domestics, bedoons” published yesterday in Kuwait Times, page 1, an editorial mistake
was made. The correct number of bedoons in Kuwait is 120,000.
We regret the mistake.
Suppliers imposing price rises
KUWAIT: Steep price rises have hit a number of local Co-ops recently, with one Co-op CEO indicating that his outlet has received notification from 50 major suppliers announcing increases of between 20
and 80 percent on a variety of products. Faihan Al-Mandeel, the head
of Al-Ardiya Cooperative Society, said that among the products
wholesalers are increasing the prices of are milk, juices, tea products,
chicken and other basics, with milk set to rise from KD 19 to KD 26
per truckload. Al-Mandeel revealed the steep price rises at a press
conference where he announced his intention to run for the presidency of the Kuwait Union of Cooperative Consumer Societies
(KUCCS). He indicated that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor
is set to call for an election of board members shortly, reported AlWatan. Al-Mandeel revealed that Al-Ardiya Co-op achieved a 6.65
percent increase in revenue last year, compared to the previous one,
also telling reporters that the Co-op is to send a Zakat (alms) donation of KD 47,000 from its profits to the Zakat House for the period.

on the treatment of cancer in particular.
He also said the Kuwaiti Health Ministry
was planning to attract Canadian teams to run
Hussein Makki Jumaa Center for Specialized
Surgery, emphasizing that a memo that was
signed will contribute in developing KuwaitiCanadian medical relations.
Kuwait is one of the countries with the

least number of cancer cases. A total of 14
people out of every 100,000 males and 13 out
of every 100,000 females have cancer. The
Kuwaiti Health Ministry registers around
1,300 new cancer cases every year, 50 percent
of which get cured.
Al-Awadhi is a member of a Kuwaiti health
delegation visiting Canada.— KUNA

7

INTERNATIONAL

8

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Iraq reinstates
59 election
candidates

President to stick by demand for full settlement halt

Abbas to discuss latest
US ideas with Arab heads
RAMALLAH: President Mahmoud Abbas is studying a US proposal for talks
between the Palestinians and Israel at a level below full-scale negotiations
between their leaders, a Palestinian official said yesterday. The proposal is
the latest idea by US Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell to bring about

a resumption of peace talks that have been frozen for 13 months. Palestinian
sources familiar with Mitchell’s weekend round of diplomacy said he had proposed confidence-building measures that would improve conditions in the
Palestinian territories.
Israeli officials, noting that Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu had on Sunday welcomed
unspecified “new ideas” for talks from Mitchell,
said their government stood ready to take part in
US-mediated discussions with Palestinian officials.
The confidence-building steps cited by
Palestinians as areas they would be keen to discuss included the transfer of authority from the
Israeli army to the Palestinians in more of the
West Bank’s territory, the removal of some Israeli
checkpoints and release of a number of Palestinian
prisoners.
These measures would be discussed at a meeting of senior ministers from each side, but not the
top leaders.
Israeli political sources said they were not
aware of specific secondary issues, such as prisoners, that might be discussed with the
Palestinians-they spoke rather of talks at a ministerial or lower level that would look at narrowing
differences over “core issues” in suspended peace
negotiations.
Core issues include the future borders of a
Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and fate
of Palestinian refugees.
A year of US diplomatic efforts has so far failed
relaunch talks aimed at ending the decades-old
BERLIN: Israeli President Shimon Peres (R) walks past an honour guard as he arrives for a to
conflict through a peace treaty agreeing to the crefour-day official visit to Germany yesterday, during which he will address the Bundestag lower ation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and
house of Parliament. —AFP
Gaza Strip.
“Holding a low-level meeting with the Israelis
that tackles issues related to the daily life of
Palestinians will not be an alternative to political
negotiations,” said the Palestinian official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity.
Abbas, who is facing US pressure to return to
peace talks, would discuss Mitchell’s ideas with
Arab leaders over the coming days “so that the
with “his vision and hope for the future of Palestinian position will be backed by the Arabs”,
BERLIN: Israeli President Shimon Peres a guard of honour and a 21-gun salute.
“The trip marks the completion of a Israel, Germany and the Middle East.”
arrived in Germany yesterday at the start
the official said.
In what is likely to be an emotional
of a visit set to culminate in a historic personal circle for the president, whose
Netanyahu said on Sunday he had heard “some
speech in parliament to mark the own grandparents and uncle were burned visit, Peres will also hold a memorial ser- interesting ideas for renewing the (peace)
alive in the Vishneva synagogue,” his vice at platform 17 of the Grunewald train process” from Mitchell.
Holocaust.
Peres, who was accompanied by sur- spokeswoman Ayelet Frish said, referring station from where Berlin’s Jews were
“I also expressed my hope that these new
expelled to Nazi labour and death camps.
vivors of Nazi death camps, will also hold to a town in modern-day Belarus.
ideas will allow for the renewal of the process.
Peres’ trip comes exactly one week
The president’s speech on January 27,
talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel and
Certainly if the Palestinians express a similar
International
Holocaust after Prime Minister Benjamin
his German counterpart Horst Koehler, the
Remembrance Day, “will mourn the six Netanyahu visited Berlin for a meeting readiness, then we will find ourselves in a diplohis spokesman said in a statement.
The president emerged from his plane million Jewish lives that perished in the between the German and Israeli cabinets matic process,” Netanyahu said.
A spokesman for the prime minister declined
wearing a long, dark coat against the freez- Holocaust including those of his grandpar- dominated by the Middle East peace
process and the Iranian nuclear pro- comment on Monday on the content of discusing Berlin weather and was received with ents and his uncle,” Frish said.
sions with Mitchell. —Reuters
The speech, in Hebrew, will conclude gramme. —AFP
full military pomp and ceremony, including

Peres begins German trip
to commemorate Holocaust

Sara Netanyahu

Israel PM’s wife
sues paper for libel
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
wife Sara sued a leading Israeli
newspaper for libel yesterday, a
spokesman said, amid a growing
scandal over her alleged treatment of household staff.
Sara Netanyahu filed the 1million-shekel (265,000 dollars,
190,000 euros) lawsuit against
the Maariv daily, charging a
recent article accusing her of firing a 70-year-old gardener at the
premier’s residence was a lie,
said Shaya Segel, a spokesman
for the Netanyahu family.
The Maariv article was an
attempt to “humiliate the prime
minister’s wife and portray her
as an unfeeling woman who
preys on the weak, treating a
veteran gardener cruelly and firing a bereaved father without a
reason,” Segel said in a statement.
“There is not a shred of truth
in the false article. The gardener
who worked at the prime minister’s residence was never fired
by the plaintiff and continues to
work there as a gardener to this
day,” according to the papers
filed at a Jerusalem court.
The libel claim comes on a
day when another newspaper
reported that Sara Netanyahu
was facing a second lawsuit

from a housekeeper.
The case was filed more than
two months ago but the court
imposed a gag order at the
request of the housekeeper who
made the complaint, Yediot
Aharonot reported on Monday.
While no details of the case
were given, the revelation is
certain to cause further embarrassment to the hawkish prime
minister, who has tried in vain
to get the media to stay out of
his family affairs.
In the first lawsuit which
came to public attention earlier
this month, housekeeper Lillian
Peretz claimed that while in
Netanyahu’s employ, she was
made to shower and change her
clothes several times a day and
to compliment the first lady,
telling her “she was pretty and
smart.”
The lawsuit alleges Peretz’s
woes were “like the story of
Cinderella,” evidently comparing Sara Netanyahu-a former air
stewardess and now a practising
psychologist-to the fairy tale’s
evil stepmother.
Netanyahu “piled on her
impossible tasks, tyrannised
her and screamed at her...
insulted her femininity... until
her mental and physical collapse.” —AFP

BAGHDAD: Iraq has reinstated
59 election candidates among
more than 500 who had been
blacklisted because of their
alleged links to executed dictator Saddam Hussein, an official
said yesterday.
Ali Al-Allami, a senior official
from an integrity and accountability committee, said 150 people had appealed for their names
to be removed from the controversial list of candidates excluded from the March 7 poll.
The blacklist includes Iraqis
from the minority Sunni Arab
community as well as dominant
Shiites but analysts say the barring of those with links to
Saddam could exclude Sunnis
from the political arena and
spark new sectarian tensions.
“After we got new information, we decided to accept the
requests of 59 candidates,”
Allami told AFP, referring to
errors in applicants’ names,
dates of birth or other personal
details that have since been corrected.
“We received a total of 150
requests,” he added, without
specifying the status of the 91
appeals that remain active.
According to Allami, 458 people are currently barred from
contesting the election.
The move also threatens to
damage the ballot by creating a
campaign battleground where
past quarrels will be exposed
rather than healed under a much
vaunted but stumbling national
reconciliation process.
The excluded candidates are
accused of membership or other
links to Saddam’s outlawed
Baath party, feared Fedayeen
(Men of Sacrifice) militia or
Mukhabarat intelligence agency.
The integrity and accountability committee whose probe
has inflamed the political climate
less than six weeks from polling
day is headed by Shiite politician
Ahmed Chalabi, who was deputy
prime minister after the 2003
US-led invasion that toppled
Saddam.
The election row sparked a
flurry of diplomatic activity in the
past week, including a visit by US
Vice President Joe Biden at the
weekend who said he was “confident” that Iraq’s leaders would
resolve the dispute. —AFP

INTERNATIONAL

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

9

Soviet war veterans say US must shift strategies in Afghanistan
MOSCOW: The United States is
repeating the mistakes that the
Soviet Union made in Afghanistan,
Russian veterans say, convinced the
USSR’s disastrous near decade-long
war there harbours deep lessons for
Western forces.
“It is now (nearly) nine years
since
the
coalition
invaded
Afghanistan and nothing has
changed,” said retired Lieutenant
General Ruslan Aushev, 55, who
served five years in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation there from
1979-1989.
However, Aushev, who was made
a Hero of the Soviet Union after

being wounded on his third Afghan
deployment, admitted that NATO and
US troops face a fiercer enemy today
than did Soviet troops.
Then, the Red Army untrained for
the mountainous terrain found themselves bogged down in an unwinnable
guerrilla war against Mujahedeen
Islamist fighters backed financially
and militarily by Washington.
“Today, the situation is more
complicated. The Mujahedeen were
more moderate than the Taliban, who
are radical. In our era, there were no
suicide bombers,” said Aushev, who
now heads the Afghan veterans committee.

Major General Makhmud Gareyev
was a former deputy chief of the Red
Army general staff and a top military
adviser to Afghan President
Najibullah, who was overthrown by
Islamic insurgents in 1992 and
hanged by the Taleban four years
later.
After the Soviet pullout in 1989,
Gareyev stayed behind to support the
Kremlin’s client regime.
He expressed doubts that the current mission in the region had much
chance to deliver long-term stability,
if coalition forces did not rapidly shift
strategy.
“The Americans are fighting a

people and not a regular army.
Napoleon never could win in Spain.
They should understand that it is
impossible to fight against a nation,”
Gareyev, now president of the
Academy of Military Sciences in
Moscow, told AFP.
The only strategy forward for the
US-led coalition forces is to focus on
reconstruction and development in
Afghanistan, according to Gareyev
and other Russian veterans.
“They have to change their politics and find other solutions. They
must help rebuild the country and
offer financial, economic and humanitarian aide,” he insisted.

Moscow initially saw its incursion
into Afghanistan in December 1979
as a brief mission to bolster its
Afghan supporters but became
bogged down in a protracted and
bloody struggle that lasted nearly 10
years.
The war, which cost over 13,000
Soviet lives and killed as many as one
million Afghans, helped lead to the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the
takeover of Afghanistan by the
Islamist Taleban.
Retired General Victor Yermakov,
who commanded Soviet forces in
Afghanistan from 1982 to 1983, has
been among the first to point to the

Soviets’ failure as a warning to the
West, calling Afghanistan an “impossible” fight.
“The only way to be respected,
would be to take the money now
spent on maintaining troops in
Afghanistan and spend it instead on
agricultural development and the
reconstruction of schools, mosques
and roads,” Yermakov said in an
interview with Russian state television Vesti-24.
One week before a London conference aimed at promoting
Afghanistan’s development, US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
announced a long-term, non-military

strategy to stabilise Afghanistan
along those lines.
The plan unveiled Thursday calls
for sending more civilian experts to
the region to rebuild the Afghan farm
sector, improve governance and
bring extremists back into mainstream society.
US President Barack Obama said
in December that the United States
would deploy another 30,000 troops
to Afghanistan in 2010 — on top of
more than 70,000 already there-to
undercut a resurgent Taliban.
Under his plan, US troops are
to begin withdrawing in July
2011. —AFP

Belfast government faces ‘High Noon’

British, Irish leaders race to
rescue N Ireland power-sharing

OSLO: A policeman stands outside the Oslo apartment of a Kurdish cleric Mullah
Krekar, who founded an Iraqi-based militant group, after unknown attackers fired
shots into his apartment, injuring one of his relatives in Oslo, Norway yesterday. —AP

Shots fired at Oslo home
of Islamist group founder
OSLO: Attackers fired shots into the Oslo apartment of a Kurdish cleric who founded an Iraqibased militant group, injuring one of his relatives,
Norwegian police said.
Mullah Krekar, the 53-year-old founder of the
radical Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, was not hurt
in the shooting early yesterday, but his son-in-law
was shot in the arm and taken to a local hospital for
treatment, police said. Witnesses saw two men
fleeing the scene, but police said in a statement
they had no suspects. They were also investigating whether a car that was set ablaze in a nearby
parking lot shortly after the shooting was connected to the incident.
Investigators are treating the incident as
attempted murder but it’s not clear whether
Krekar was the intended target, said Grethe Lien
Metlid, of the Oslo police force’s violent crimes
unit.
Krekar, born Najm al-Din Faraj Ahmad, founded Ansar al-Islam while a refugee in Norway. The
group is listed as a terrorist organization by the US
and others. It is suspected of having carried out
suicide bombings against coalition forces in Iraq.
Krekar’s lawyer, Brynjar Meling, told broadcaster NRK the shooters tried to break into the
apartment before firing in what he said appeared to
be “a well-planned and professional attack.” He did
not say whether he believed any specific group
was responsible for the shooting, though he
acknowledged that Krekar frequently receives
threats.

Metlid said “several shots” were fired around 2
a.m. (0100GMT) from a covered walkway outside
the fifth-floor apartment.
She said five people — Krekar, his wife, son,
daughter and son-in-law — were in the apartment
at the time. The son-in-law, identified only as a 27year-old man visiting from London, was the only
person injured. His wounds were not serious and
he was released from the hospital after receiving
treatment, Metlid said.
Yesterday afternoon, police were still interviewing neighbors in the five-storey apartment
complex with a peeling teal interior in Oslo’s largely immigrant Toeyen neighborhood.
The kitchen window of Krekar’s apartment had
three bullet holes and a larger hole where part of
the pane had been shot out. Inam Ullah, a 40-yearold bus driver who lives next door to Krekar, told
The Associated Press that he initially thought the
gunshots were fireworks. “I thought maybe it was
drunk kids making noise. I was surprised when the
police came,” he said. He described Krekar’s family as “very quiet” and “good neighbors,” a “family (that) never causes any trouble.” Krekar has
said he no longer leads Ansar al-Islam, and denies
links to al-Qaeda. The United Nations in
December 2006 added him to a list of people
believed associated with al-Qaeda.
Norway ordered the cleric deported in 2005
after declaring him a national security threat, but
authorities have refused to expel him because of
the security situation in Iraq. —AP

7-year-old raises
$160,000 for Haiti
LONDON: A young British
schoolboy has raised nearly
100,000 pounds ($160,000) for
Haiti’s relief effort. Sevenyear-old Charlie Simpson was
so upset by the devastating
images of Haiti’s deadly earthquake that he asked his mother
if she could help him set up a
sponsored bicycle ride around
his local park in west London.
Charlie originally hoped to raise
500 pounds ($800) for
UNICEF’s Haiti appeal with
Sunday’s 5-mile (8-kilometer)
bike ride, but his Internet page
was flooded with donations.
He raised nearly 50,000
pounds in a single day and
money is still flooding in after
Charlie’s story was splashed on
the front page of Britain’s Daily
Mirror newspaper yesterday.
His mother Leonora Simpson
says she can’t believe the public
response. —AP

LONDON: Charlie Simpson waves during his five
mile cycle ride around South Park, west London,
yesterday. —AP

Jailed ETA members launch hunger strike
MADRID: Jailed members of the armed Basque
separatist group ETA announced yesterday they
have launched hunger strikes to demand they be
granted political status.
“With this hunger strike, we want to give
some strength to our demand for political status
that is our right,” an association representing
ETA prisoners, EPPK, said in statement released
to the pro-independence Basque newspaper Gara.
Gara said that the EPPK gave no further
details on the protest but said that one inmate,
Lorentxa Gimon, has already been refusing food in
a prison in Roanne, in central France, since
January 2.

A spokeswoman for the Spanish prison service
said she had “no information” on the matter.
Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez
Rubalcaba acknowledged that Basque prisoners
were staging a “protest.”
This “protest has more to do with internal
cohesion of the prisoners than with prison policies
which have been largely the same for the last 20
years,” he told Spain’s Punto Radio.
EPPK, which represents some 750 ETA members detained in Spain and France, announced on
January 4 it planned a series of protests throughout 2010 in response to what it called the two
countries’ “cruel prison policy.” —AFP

BELFAST: British and Irish leaders said they would make an unscheduled Minister Gordon Brown said he and Irish premier Brian Cowen hoped to
dash to Northern Ireland yesterday to help its power-sharing executive “assist the completion” of talks between the nationalist Catholic Sinn Fein
resolve a deadlock on policing that threatens its future. British Prime and the pro-British Democratic Unionists (DUP) who share power in Belfast.
Negotiations between the
two partners over the transfer of
police and justice powers from
London to their joint government are the final and most controversial part of the devolution
process.
But the discussions have
stalled, and Sinn Fein has
warned that it could pull out of
the government altogether
unless progress is made.
The sense of crisis has been
heightened by a sex and funding
scandal involving the wife of first
minister Peter Robinson, who
had an affair with a 19-year-old
whom she helped financially,
triggering a police investigation.
Robinson, the leader of the
DUP, has stood aside temporarily as first minister vowing to
clear his own name, but remains
engaged with the devolution
talks.
After a meeting in London,
Brown and Cowen-whose governments facilitated the powersharing agreement-expressed
hope that a deal could be done.
“We’re going to Belfast to
LONDON: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (R) shakes hands with Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen at
see where we can assist this
10 Downing Street, in central London, before their meeting, yesterday. —AFP
process. We believe it’s very
important that we get a successful outcome to these discussions,” Cowen told reporters,
ahead of the visit later Monday.
Brown highlighted the role
devolution played in bringing
peace to Northern Ireland, which
endured three decades of violence between Catholic republican opponents of British rule and
Protestant unionists who supported it.
He said the policing issues
were “all soluble problems”,
adding: “We believe that together we can assist the completion
of these talks.”
“I believe that the end product will be that devolution of
policing and justice will take
place,” Brown said.
Sinn Fein called an emergency meeting in Belfast
Monday between its deputy first
minister, Martin McGuinness,
the DUP’s Robinson, to address
the lack of agreement.
At the weekend, Sinn Fein
chief Gerry Adams described the
meeting as “critical” and suggested his party could walk away
from the power-sharing process
unless a deal was made.
He has accused the DUP of
derailing the talks by demanding
concessions on policing controversial Protestant Orange Order
parades. However, Robinson
has insisted progress is being
made.
Speaking ahead of yesterday’s
talks,
McGuinness
accused the DUP of failing to
uphold a 2006 deal that paved
the way for the power-sharing
government.
He said Sinn Fin had made a
“historical and monumental
move forward on the issue of
policing” after the St Andrews
Agreement, but “three years on,
we are waiting for the DUP to
deliver and honour their commitments”.
However, he calmed fears
that Sinn Fein would abandon the
process, saying that making devolution succeed had become “my
life’s work”, “because I passionately believe in power-sharing”.
The sectarian violence in
Northern Ireland was largely
ended by the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement, and all the main
paramilitary groups from both
sides have now disarmed,
although some dissident groups
remain active.
Most recently, a policeman
lost a leg in a car bomb attack
earlier this month. Two men
aged 34 and 33 were arrested
over his attempted murder
yesterday. —AFP

10

INTERNATIONAL

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Cold snap leaves 430 dead in eastern Europe
BUCHAREST: A cold snap in eastern and
southeast Europe has left more than 40 people dead as temperatures plunged to minus
35 degrees Celsius (minus 31 Fahrenheit),
authorities said yesterday.
Snow has blanketed swathes of western
Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania, while Poland
has again gripped by a deep freeze that has
killed more than 200 people since
November. In Bulgaria, schools remained
closed on Monday in many eastern towns
while rescue services fought their way
through four-metre-high snowdrifts to bring

bread and other necessities to cut-off villages.
In Romania temperatures fell to minus
34.4 degrees Celsius in the centre of the
country, roads were cut off and dozens of
trains cancelled.
“A total of 22 deaths have been recorded
since the current cold snap started five days
ago,” health ministry spokeswoman Oana
Grigore told AFP.
“Most of them were elderly, homeless
people,” junior minister Raed Arafat said on
Realitatea TV channel. With no let-up in

view before tomorrow, authorities have multiplied efforts to identify thousands of homeless people and take them to shelters.
Siberian cold is expected to continue in
the centre and north-east of Romania until
Wednesday, according to the Romanian
meteorological institute.
In Turkey, five people died after a fierce
snowstorm caused power outages at the
weekend in Istanbul, while further west,
near the Greek and Bulgarian borders, villages and major roads were blocked by snow.
Snow could reach 35 centimetres (14

inches) deep in some parts of Istanbul, a city
of 14 million people, according to the natural
disaster coordination centre. In Bulgaria,
the Siberian cold front left three people dead
over the weekend, authorities reported yesterday. The whole country saw temperatures well below freezing, in what weather
services had said would be the coldest day
this winter. Minus 29 degrees Celsius was
recorded in the northern town of Glavinitza.
In Poland temperatures as low as minus
35 Celsius over the weekend claimed 11
lives, police said yesterday. “The victims are

mainly homeless and individuals who
abused alcohol,” lowering their resistance to
cold, spokeswoman Kamila Szala told AFP.
Police believe that alcohol also played a part
in the death of a 13-year-old boy who died of
hypothermia near his home in Glowienka, a
village in south-east Poland.
“We know that Kamil was drinking alcohol Saturday with his 15-year-old brother
and 16-year cousin, who both went home to
alert parents,” local police spokesman Pawel
Miedlar told AFP.
“The parents alerted the police Sunday

morning, when it was already too late.”
“This winter’s death toll is tragic-despite
constant police warnings and aid to people at
risk,” Szala said, adding that 202 people had
lost their lives to exposure in Poland since
November.
The victims were mainly homeless men
aged 35 to 60 under the influence of alcohol
who refused to stay at shelters for the
homeless, she added.
Weather forecasters have predicted more
severe sub-zero temperatures across Poland
in the coming days. — AFP

of State Hillary Clinton and officials from the United Nations were among
those taking part. Canada is eager to assert its role in coordinating the emergency response to the January 12 disaster, which left more than 150,000 dead
and hundreds of thousands others homeless, hungry and wounded.

MONTREAL: Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon, third from right addresses a conference
on Haitian reconstruction as Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, fifth from right, listens yesterday, in Montreal. — AP

US seeks international support
for Yemen against Al-Qaeda
WASHINGTON: The United
States is set to hold talks with
European and Arab partners in
London tomorrow to try to rally
support behind a drive to help
Yemen defeat a growing Al-Qaeda
threat. The impetus for the meeting
comes from a botched bid on
Christmas Day to blow up a US airliner over Detroit by a Nigerian passenger allegedly trained by the
Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Though there has been no official confirmation, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton will likely attend the
meeting in London which comes
days after Britain raised its terrorism threat assessment from substantial to severe.
The United States hopes donors
will speed up aid previously pledged
to Sanaa to help it tackle a set of
growing troubles threatening the
stability of a country some analysts
call a “failing state.”
However, persuading donors to
deliver on all of the 4.7 billion dollars pledged at a London conference
in 2006 apparently depends on
whether Yemen can carry out the
reforms needed to reassure them
the funds will be spent properly.
US officials did not explicitly
make the link, but did not deny one.
Clinton spoke of a “common
threat” from violent extremists
when she appeared in Washington
last Thursday with Yemeni Foreign
Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi as they
discussed Yemen’s problems and
plans for the London conference.
“We have seen al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula kill tourists in
Yemen, Yemeni security officers,
and being involved in the training
and equipping of the perpetrator on
the attempted Christmas Day airline bomber,” she told reporters.
Her spokesman Philip Crowley
said later that Clinton pressed
Kurbi on the need for Sanaa to do
more to promote “development and
creation of economic opportunity as
a tool to help reduce both extremism and conflict within Yemen.”
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah

Saleh’s government is not only
grappling with the AQAP but also a
Shiite rebellion in the north, a
secessionist movement in the
south, a water shortage and a crumbling economy.
Crowley said the chief US diplomat also pressed Kurbi on his government’s plans for not only defeating Al-Qaeda but also resolving a
Shiite revolt.
The meeting is “not going to be
a donors conference, per se, but just
simply to outline what we think the
most significant requirements that
Yemen has to be able to stabilize
itself,” Crowley said.
“The secretary pledged that we
will look to see how we, in the most
urgent areas, how we can speed up
assistance,” Crowley said, confirming that aid from the 2006 conference was slow in coming.
Kurbi said he believes donors
now realize “the delay in implementation (of aid) is not the fault of the

Yemeni government,” but rather
the result of “bureaucratic” and
“technical” issues.
But a senior State Department
official told AFP three weeks ago on
the condition of anonymity that
donors have hesitated to deliver on
their pledges amid doubts about
accountability in the country.
Marisa Porges, a former US government advisor on counter-terrorism now with the Council on
Foreign Relations, said the London
meeting will help put the international community “on the same
page” on how to tackle Yemen’s
problems.
It will also “put pressure on
Yemen’s leadership to live up to
expectations, or have the response
that would be most helpful to solve
the situation,” whether it is AlQaeda, the rebellion or other issues,
she told AFP.
Analyst Daniel Byman said in
remarks earlier this month on the

Brookings Institution website that
the problem in Yemen was far more
complicated than simply shoring up
a fragile government.
He noted that the Saleh government had been “half-hearted” in
taking on Al-Qaeda in the past, partly because it used the group to fight
its domestic enemies, and Sanaa
may want to keep such an option
open in the future.
“We have to watch this one
closely,” he said.
The United States for its part
has been helping Yemen to train and
equip its forces since 2006, and officials say its contribution is expected
to rise to 63 million dollars in development and security assistance in
the 2010 fiscal year.
Both countries are sharing intelligence and the United States is
widely suspected of having helped
Yemeni forces conduct airstrikes
against Al-Qaeda targets in the past
few weeks. — AFP

NEW YORK: In this April 18, 2006, file photo, released by the US Marine
Corps, troops from the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment fold US flags
after raising each on a flagpole in memory of three Marines and one Navy
medic, who died, April 2, 2006 when a bomb destroyed their vehicle, in a ceremony at Hurricane Point Marine base in Ramadi, Iraq. — AP

“Know that Canada, the group
of friends of Haiti and the international community and non-governmental groups are pledging our support during this period of crisis and
beyond,”
Canada’s
Foreign
Minister Lawrence Cannon told
Bellerive.
French Foreign Minister
Bernard Kouchner, founder of the
international charity Doctors
Without Borders, was also participating in the six-hour closed-door
talks. The ministers were discussing how to streamline delivery
of food, water, drugs and medical
supplies to the swelling number of
people living in makeshift camps
around the shattered capital of Portau-Prince.
Speaking here Sunday, Bellerive
urged Haitians living abroad to
actively participate in rebuilding the
country.
“There is no other solution
today but the Haitian diaspora’s
integration in the reconstruction
effort,” he said.
Washington has taken a frontline role in the disaster relief effort,
sending in tens of thousands of
troops and rescue teams and
anchoring a hospital ship offshore to
treat injured Haitians.
Experts have warned that hundreds of thousands of Haitians will
be living off foreign aid and in temporary housing for years to come
during the slow reconstruction
process. Thousands have been left
disabled.
In Ottawa, Cannon spoke of
Canada’s intention to “fully support
Prime
Minister
Jean-Max
Bellerive’s commitment to move
beyond reconstruction to rebuild a
new Haiti.”
The conservative government
is keen to shore up political support
for Canada’s role in assisting Haiti
as it faces growing protests at home
for its decision to prorogue parliament until March while it deals with
the Haiti crisis.
“Prime Minister Stephen
Harper is fully engaged in the
humanitarian response to this devastating earthquake, and has set in
motion a rapid, comprehensive and
determined disaster-relief effort on
behalf of the government of
Canada,” Cannon said. Foreign ministers and other officials from
Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay,
Mexico, Costa Rica, the Dominican
Republic, Japan and Spain were also
set to participate in the emergency
meeting.
They were joined by officials
from the European Union, the
Organization of American States,
the Inter-American Development
Bank, the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund.
Japan said it would pledge 70
million dollars in aid to Haiti and
deploy as many as 300 peacekeepers to the UN mission there.
Venezuela, Nicaragua and
Bolivia, leftist regimes that have
criticized the presence US troops
on Haiti soil, did not participate in
the conference. But their foreign
ministers met in Caracas Sunday to
discuss their own assistance program. The Montreal talks were
expected to lay the groundwork for
a full-fledged donors conference on
Haiti in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton said yesterday
that military contributions from
around the world were vital to helping Haiti as she headed to an emergency aid conference in Montreal.
Clinton, meeting in Washington
with Italian Foreign Minister
Franco Frattini, applauded Rome’s
decision to send an aircraft carrier
with 800 soldiers and a floating hospital to earthquake-battered Haiti.
“What we see is an enormously
committed and effective international effort that could not succeed
without additional military assets,”
Clinton told reporters. “It’s just
easier for the United States to get
there first because Haiti is our
neighbor,” she said.— AFP

PORT-AU-PRINCE: Haitains wait for buses at a bus station in Port-auPrince yesterday to leave the capital. More than 235,000 Haitians have
taken advantage of free transport to flee the quake-struck Port-au-Prince
area, where as many as 800,000 are thought to have gathered in makeshift
camps, the UN said yesterday. — AFP

Chicago man pleads not guilty
to plotting Mumbai attacks
CHICAGO: A Chicago businessman pleaded not
guilty yesterday to helping an old friend from military school in Pakistan plot the deadly 2008
Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.
Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 49, has been held in
jail since his October arrest on charges of helping
plot an attack on the Danish newspaper that published incendiary cartoons of the prophet
Mohammed in 2005.
Prosecutors allege that Rana helped his friend
David Coleman Headley, a key suspect in the
Mumbai attacks, by allowing him to use his immigration company as a cover for surveillance trips
to India and Denmark.
Rana was charged last week with three separate counts of providing material support for terrorism in the Mumbai attacks, the Denmark terror plot, and to the banned Pakistani militant
group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Also indicted on conspiracy charges related to
the Denmark plot were Ilyas Kashmiri, an alleged
terror kingpin in Pakistan who prosecutors accuse
of being in regular contact with Al-Qaeda leaders,
and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired major
in the Pakistani military. Neither man is in US custody. Headley, 49, has pleaded not guilty to 12 terrorism related charges and remains in custody
where he is cooperating with prosecutors.
The Washington-born son of a former Pakistani
diplomat and American mother, Headley reportedly befriended Bollywood stars and even dated an
actress during his lengthy surveillance trips to
Mumbai.
The indictment alleges that Rana acted as a
messenger while Headley scoped out the Mumbai
terror targets, taking photos and video and entering their positions on a GPS device.
Nearly a year after the bloody 60-hour siege
which began November 26, 2008, Headley was

allegedly recorded discussing five future targets
with Rana.
Prosecutors said the targets included
Bollywood, the Indian temple Somnath, the
National Defense College in Delhi, Shiv Sena, a
political party in India with roots in Hindu nationalism and the Danish newspaper.
Headley had already begun the planning for a
second Indian attack during a March 2009 surveillance trip whose targets included the National
Defense College and Chabad Houses in “several
cities” in India, the indictment alleges.
He was also working on the Danish newspaper
plot weeks before the Mumbai attack was carried
out, the indictment alleges.
Headley is accused of once again using Rana’s
immigration business as a cover in order to
arrange a visit to the Copenhagen and Aarhus
offices of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s highest circulating daily.
During a February meeting in Pakistan,
Kashmiri allegedly told Headley that they should
use a truck bomb to attack the newspaper and
directed him to meet with European contacts who
could provide the money, weapons and manpower
for the attack.
Headley and Rana were arrested in October on
terror charges related to the plot to attack
Jyllands-Posten and kill an editor and the cartoonist.
Headley was charged last month with spending
two years casing Mumbai, even taking boat tours
around the city’s harbor to scope out landing sites
for the attackers.
Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian citizen who
owns the Chicago-based First World Immigration
Services that Headley allegedly used as a cover,
insists that he is a pacifist who was “duped” by his
friend. — AFP

ROME: Pope Benedict XVI (C) smiles as he arrives to preside the celebration of Vespers at the conclusion of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
yesterday at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls in Rome. — AFP

326 killed in Nigeria religious violence
JOS: Sectarian violence between Christians and
Muslims in central Nigeria left 326 people dead last
week, a state police commissioner said yesterday,
pledging to bring those responsible for the killings
to justice.
Acting Plateau State Police
Commissioner Ikechukwu Aduba said officers have
arrested 303 people in connection with the rioting
in Jos, a one-time tourist and mining town that
straddles Nigeria’s Christian south and Muslim
north. Of those arrested, 139 have been taken to
Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, for questioning.
Aduba said more suspects remained at large,
including those who took part in killings that nearly wiped out a small village on the southern outskirts of Jos. Volunteers there discovered bodies
shoved into communal wells and sewer dumps.
Others lay dead in the bush outside the village, vic-

tims of gunshot and machete wounds. Aduba also
promised those arrested would face trial in Jos.
Government leaders in Jos have complained that
those involved in previous riots later made bail in
Abuja and never faced justice. Sectarian violence in
this central region of Nigeria has left thousands
dead over the past decade. The latest outbreak
came despite the Nigerian government’s efforts to
quell religious extremism in the West African
country. There are conflicting accounts about what
unleashed the recent bloodshed. According to a
state police commissioner, skirmishes began after
Muslim youths set a Christian church ablaze, but
Muslim leaders denied that. Muslims say it began
with an argument over the rebuilding of a Muslim
home in a predominantly Christian neighborhood
that had been destroyed in November 2008. — AP

INTERNATIONAL

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

11

Hong Kong democrats press votes-for-all campaign
HONG KONG: Five pro-democracy lawmakers said yesterday they would push
ahead with a plan to resign over at the slow
pace of democratic reform in Hong Kong,
despite growing opposition from communist
mainland China.
The group said they would quit today, in
the hope that the by-election would be a defacto referendum on universal suffrage in
the southern Chinese territory, 13 years
after it was returned to Beijing by Britain.
Only half of Hong Kong’s legislature is

directly elected while a largely pro-China
committee effectively selects the remainder
and appoints the city’s leader.
The Chinese government has said Hong
Kong’s chief executive could be directly
elected by 2017 and the legislature by 2020,
but pro-democracy lawmakers want universal suffrage by 2012.
Beijing issued a statement earlier this
month expressing “grave concern” over the
campaign and said the “referendum” was
not in line the Basic Law, which spells out

Hong Kong’s political system.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Party has indicated it would not take part in any by-election
after the democrats used the word “uprising” in a campaign advert, implying the use
of force to overthrow a government.
Audrey Eu, leader of the Civic Party,
which will have two members giving up
their seats in the 60-member legislature,
asked opponents not to focus on one word to
distort the campaign.
“You have to put the word in context.

Ours is a sensible, peaceful and mild movement in pursuit for Hong Kong people’s
dream for democracy,” she told a press conference. “It’s about ballots, not bullets.”
Constitutional reform can only take place
with the approval of two-thirds of Hong
Kong’s legislature, meaning the democrats,
who hold 23 seats, are unlikely to be able to
force their agenda on policymakers.
But Eu said her party would stick to the
plan even if other pro-Beijing lawmakers follow the lead of the Liberal Party, which is

widely seen to be pressured by the mainland
to stay away from any by-election.
“Even if Beijing is so powerful as to
make all these parties drop out, it doesn’t
mean we have failed.”
Wong Yuk-man, chairman of League of
Social Democrats, who will resign from his
seat with two other core members of his
party“Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung and
Albert Chan-vowed that they would not
retreat because of their opponents’ verbal

attack. Wong threatened to launch legal
action if pro-Beijing lawmakers block funding for the by-election.
Stephen Lam, the city’s Secretary for
Mainland and Constitutional Affairs,
appealed to the democrats to drop their plan,
the South China Morning Post reported yesterday. “The two parties should rein in the
horse at the edge of the cliff... If they want
to push forward Hong Kong’s democratic
development, they can stay on the legislature and do so.” — AFP

Dalai Lama seeks full independence

Dalai Lama’s envoys to
re-open talks with China
DHARAMSHALA: Representatives of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the
Dalai Lama will revive stalled talks with China today over the thorny issue
of the Himalayan region’s autonomy, his office said. The last round of talks

NAGO: Anti-US base candidate Susumu Inamine, center, dances with his
supporters as his wife Ritsuko, holding a bouquet, claps in celebration as he
was virtually assured of his victory in a mayoral election of this small
Okinawan city of Nago, Japan, Sunday night. Residents of Nago on Sunday
elected the mayor who is staunchly against moving a US base there from a
larger city nearby. — AP

Japan PM vows US
base decision by May
TOKYO: Japan’s leader yesterday promised not to delay
beyond May a decision on the
fate of a US base, as a feud
with Washington over the
nagging issue threatens to
further erode voter support
already hurt by a funding
scandal.
Prime Minister Yukio
Hatoyama seemed to have
even less room to manoeuvre
in the dispute over the
Marine base in Okinawa,
southern Japan, after a candidate who opposes an existing
plan to relocate it won a local
election on Sunday.
The vote came a day after
prosecutors questioned the
No. 2 in his Democratic Party
over the funding scandal,
which is clouding the outlook
for the annual budget from
April 1, aimed at bolstering a
fragile economic recovery.
The lower house passed
on Monday an extra budget
for the current year to March
31 to fund 7.2 trillion yen
($79.7 billion) in stimulus
aimed at supporting the economy. It will be debated in the
upper house budget committee this week.
Although Japanese media
said the extra budget was
likely to be enacted given the
risk of public backlash over
policy delays, opposition parties have called for more
debate on the scandal in parliament.
Concerns over the deliberations for the 2010/11 budget
could weigh on Japanese
stocks in the short term,
although there has been little
impact so far. Additionally, it
could also cloud voter support

for Hatoyama ahead of a midyear election for parliament’s
upper house.
The Democrats need to
win an outright majority in
the upper house vote to
reduce reliance on two small
but vocal coalition partners
who could add pressure for
more spending and increase
an already huge public debt,
pushing up government bond
yields.
Hatoyama brushed off concerns he could keep dithering
over Tokyo’s dispute with
Washington over the Futenma
base, which has bred voter
doubts about his four monthold government’s ability to
manage relations with its top
security ally.
“The government has
promised to start from
scratch and to be responsible
in reaching a conclusion on
this issue by the end of May,”
Hatoyama told reporters. “We
will definitely fulfil that.”
Media reports have said
Hatoyama may visit the
United States around May,
although no official decision
has been made.
A weekend poll by broadcaster TBS showed the government’s approval rate at
46.4 percent, down 6.6 points
from earlier this month and
below the disapproval rate of
53.1 percent.
Hatoyama
faces
an
increasingly tough decision
on the airbase, which under a
2006 deal with Washington
was to be relocated to the city
of Nago in a less crowded part
of the southern island.
Washington wants Japan to
implement the plan. But

Hatoyama is under pressure
from his tiny coalition allies to
stick to a pledge to move
Futenma off the island, where
many residents feel they
shoulder an unfair share of
U.S. forces.
Given Hatoyama’s growing
headaches, the 2010/11 budget, if not the extra budget as
well, could become a political
football,
said
Tsuneo
Watanabe, a senior fellow at
the Tokyo Foundation think
tank.
The key could be the fate
of the Democrats’ kingpin
Ichiro Ozawa, who Hatoyama
has stood by despite his funding scandal because his undisputed electioneering skills
are seen as important to the
party winning the upper
house election.
Ozawa has denied any
wrongdoing in the scandal
that has led to the arrests of
three current and former
aides on suspicion of misreporting political donations.
“The real battle will be
concerning the annual budget,” Watanabe said, adding
that Ozawa might decide to
step down from his No.2 post
while keeping actual control
of the campaign in exchange
for smooth passage of the
budget.
Watanabe
also
said
Hatoyama might eventually
have to step down over the
Futenma dispute, especially
if he opts for the original
plan to keep Washington
happy. Despite the anti-base
mayoral candidate’s victory,
the vote was extremely
close, reflecting divided local
opinion. — Reuters

HONG KONG: Protestors asking for the release of prominent jailed Chinese
dissident Liu Xiaobo demonstrate outside the Central Government Liaison
Office — responsible for ties with Beijing, in Hong Kong yesterday. The
European parliament called on January 21 for the immediate release of
prominent jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, accusing Beijing of judicial
harassment. — AFP

“We are meeting the Chinese
and this is an important process of
trying to find a mutually agreed
solution,” the Dalai Lama’s
spokesman Tenzin Taklha said yesterday.
“The agenda of His Holiness the
Dalai Lama is the same: That the
problem has to be solved only
through dialogue,” he said.
Taklha added that the exact
venue for the meeting in China had
not been confirmed but said the
envoys would return to India by the
beginning of February.
After their last interaction in
November 2008, China said the
door would be kept open for future
discussions despite the “serious
divergences” that remained.
Lodi G. Gyari and Kelsang
Gyaltsen will again lead what will
be the ninth round of talks, said
officials in Dharamshala, the Indian
hill town where the Dalai Lama has
lived for five decades and where
many Tibetan exiles are based.
China said last year it would consider reviving the dialogue, which
began in 2002, but has often repeated demands that the Tibetan leader
renounce “separatist” activitieswhich he denies supporting.
The Dalai Lama has sought
“meaningful autonomy” for Tibet
since he fled his homeland following a failed uprising in 1959 against
Chinese rule, nine years after
Chinese troops invaded the region.

collapsed 15 months ago with Beijing saying no progress had been made and
insisting it would not compromise on the status of Tibet as an integral part
of China.

BOGHGAYA: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama smiles during the last day of teachings at The Kalachakra Ground near The
Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya on January 9, 2010.
Representatives of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama
will revive talks with China today on the thorny issue of the
Himalayan region after a 15-month impasse, his office said. — AFP

China says the Dalai Lama actually seeks full independence.
Tibet erupted in violence in
March 2008 on the 49th anniversary of the failed uprising and the
remote region has since been tightly controlled.
The Dalai Lama, 75, has attracted huge support for the Tibetans’
cause over decades of global campaigning, and he is likely to meet
US President Barack Obama shortly-an event sure to spark outrage
from Chinese leaders.
Obama faced intense criticism
last year when he declined to meet
the Dalai Lama, the first time in
nearly two decades that the spiritual leader has not met the president
during a visit to Washington.
Critics of Obama said he avoided
an encounter so as not to upset
Beijing before the president’s highstakes debut visit to China in
November.
However the Dalai Lama later
praised the president for taking up
the issue of Tibet during Obama’s
visit to Beijing. “He, actually publicly as well as behind the scenes,
has really taken up the issue of
Tibet with Chinese leaders very
seriously,” the Dalai Lama told
reporters in New Delhi. China,
which earlier this month named as
its new Tibet governor a military
veteran who vowed to ensure stability in region, has yet to confirm
the latest round of talks. — AFP

in the news
Churches torched
JAKARTA: A Muslim mob torched unlicensed
churches and priest’s home in western Indonesia
last week and security forces have deployed to
ensure order, a government spokesman said yesterday. No one was hurt when hundreds of villagers burned down two Protestant churches
Friday in Sibuhuan village, North Sumatra provincial spokesman Baharuddin Djafar said. No
arrests were made, but he promised authorities
would “investigate the case and bring the perpetrators to court.” Relations between religious
groups are generally peaceful in Indonesia, the
world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, but
minorities are sometimes targeted by conservative Islamic groups opposed to religious diversity.
Christians say it has become increasingly difficulty to obtain licenses to operate churches and that
violence is more frequent.
Yudhoyono releases pop album
JAKARTA:
Indonesian President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono has taken a break from battling rampant corruption and mutinous coalition
partners to compose another album of romantic

pop songs. “Ku Yakin Sampai Di Sana” (I’m
Certain I’ll Get There) was released Sunday and
features some of Indonesia’s best-known singers
and musicians. Like the 60-year-old former general’s previous two albums, “Ku Yakin” deals
with themes such as love, loyalty and patriotism.
“In my spare time from fulfilling the people’s
mandate as president, I like to express my feelings in works of art,” the president commonly
known as SBY writes on the album cover, which
features an image of children running with the
Indonesian flag. “His songs are about life. While
travelling in the car, he will observe things
around him and then jot down the lyrics and read
them out.” Yudhoyono’s debut release was
“Rinduku Padamu” (My Longing for You) in 2007,
which was followed by “Evolusi” (Evolution) in
2009.
Quake hits off Japan
TOKYO: A 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck off
southern Japan yesterday, but there were no
immediate reports of casualties or damage, and
no tsunami warning was issued, government
agencies said. The quake struck at 4:15 pm (0715

GMT) at a depth of 58 kilometres (36 miles)
below the sea floor, 104 kilometres southeast of
Kyushu island’s Kagoshima prefecture, said the
US Geological Survey in a preliminary report.
Around 20 percent of the world’s most powerful
earthquakes strike Japan.
Asylum-seekers blew up boat
SYDNEY: Asylum-seekers desperate to reach
Australia may have caused an explosion which blew
apart their crowded boat, tossing most those onboard into the water and leaving five dead, a court
was told yesterday. An inquest into the deaths of the
five Afghans heard that in the lead-up to the blast,
those on-board the vessel, which was being guided
by the Australian navy, wrongly thought they were
being taken to Indonesia. “They became noisy and
agitated and ultimately control of them and the vessel was lost,” Stephen Walsh, counsel assisting the
coroner, told the inquest. Walsh said there was “a
body of evidence” which suggested the rickety boat
had been sabotaged and set alight before it exploded
last April as it was being taken to an immigration
processing centre on Christmas Island.

2 jailed in Malaysian ritual killing
KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian
court yesterday sentenced a man
and his cousin to 10 years each
in prison in the fatal beating of
the man’s parents during a ritual
to expel evil spirits, but acquitted the main defendant by reason of insanity.
The three men, in their 20s,
were charged with causing the
death of the two relatives during
a family gathering in an apartment in Kuala Lumpur in
October 2008. The victims were
beaten with brooms and motorcycle helmets to purge them of
evil spirits and cure them of
smoking habits and other problems. The victims were supposed to be revived afterward,
but they did not survive the
beatings, court officials have
said.
A Kuala Lumpur court found
Muhamad Fauzi Abdul Razak and
his cousin, Muhammad Nizam
Mohamad Ibrahim, guilty of culpable homicide and sentenced
them to 10 years in prison, said
public prosecutor Aidatul Azura
Zainal Abidin.
Muhammad
Nizam is the son of the
deceased. The principal defen-

dant, Muhamad Ilyas Abdul
Razak, was acquitted of the
charges but ordered to be sent to
a mental hospital. He is the
brother of Muhammad Fauzi.
“The court said he was insane at
the time of the occurrence,”
Aidatul said.
Aidatul said she had sought
the maximum penalty of 30
years for the two others but the
court took into consideration
that the accused were still
young. Muhammad Ilyas, 25,
had testified that he was
bestowed with powers from the
leader of a banned cult to heal
sicknesses and raise the dead.
He had testified that he beat his
uncle and aunt in a ritual to
cleanse them of evil spirits that
could have harmed the family. A
government psychiatrist testified that Ilyas was mentally
unsound and had a bipolar mood
disorder. Superstitious beliefs
are strong in the majority
Islamic country. In villages, it is
common for people to seek the
help of spiritual healers for mental and physical illnesses, but
their rituals are rarely known to
involve violence. — AP

MANILA: Catholic priests wave white handkerchiefs during a fiveday National Congress of the Clergy yesterday, in Manila,
Philippines. The Congress is aimed at strengthening vows of priests
in the predominantly Catholic Philippines as well as define their role
in the May 2010 presidential elections. — AP

12

INTERNATIONAL

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Turkey hosts Afghan neighbours ahead of London conference

61ST REPUBLIC DAY

Talks with Taleban loom over
Pakistan-Afghanistan summit

MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT OF INDIA

ISTANBUL: The leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan will seek closer cooperation in the fight against militants during a summit in Istanbul yesterday, but
a plan to reach out to Taleban insurgents will likely dominate the talks.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari meet
ahead of a London conference where Afghanistan and the international com-

munity are set to agree a framework for the Afghan government to take
responsibility for its own security. The two men were due to hold talks on the
sidelines of a summit with Turkey, which has been working behind the scenes
to repair relations between Islamabad and Kabul, notably over negotiations
with the Taleban.

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Abdullah Gul (C) is flanked by Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai
(L) and Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari (R) as they convene for talks for the Turkey-AfghanistanPakistan trio summit meeting to discuss closer cooperation against Taleban insurgents and improve
ties poisoned by the insecurity plaguing their rugged border, in Istanbul, yesterday. — AFP

S Korea president offers to
help India build nuke plants
NEW DELHI: South Korea’s president
offered yesterday to help energy-hungry India
build more nuclear reactors as he forecast a
new trade pact between the Asian powerhouses would push ties to new heights.
President Lee Myung-bak touted what he
said was his nation’s expertise in building
nuclear reactors as he expressed hope that
South Korean companies could help India’s
construct new atomic power plants.
Lee said South Korea, which recently won
a 20.4-billion-dollar deal to design, build and
operate four nuclear power plants in the
United Arab Emirates, has displayed its
“global competitiveness” in the nuclear field.
South Korea was a key supporter of New
Delhi in its successful bid to have a 34-yearold embargo on the export and sale of nuclear
technology to India lifted.
In a speech to business leaders, Lee added
that a far-reaching trade pact which came into
effect at the start of the year would put relations on to a new trajectory.
The
Comprehensive
Economic
Partnership Agreement between South
Korea and India which scraps or reduces most
trade tariffs heralds a “great new era” for the
two countries, said Lee.
The president, who was accompanied by a
high-powered political and business delegation, was slated to be chief guest at India’s
Republic Day national celebrations today.
Lee, who is on a four-day visit, met top
Indian leaders yesterday to discuss furthering
trade between the two countries, which has
increased more than five-fold to 15.6 billion
dollars from three billion in 2002.

NEW DELHI: South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, left,
shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
before a meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, India, yesterday. Lee, on a four-day state visit, will be the chief guest at
Republic Day function today. — AP
Leading Indian industry group FICCI forecast bilateral trade could hit by 100 billion dollars by 2020.
Indian Trade Minister Anand Sharma said
New Delhi was hoping for greater Asian economic integration to make the 21st century
“Asia’s century” and the trade deal with South

Korea would help achieve that goal.
He said South Korea could also play a big
role in improving India’s dilapidated infrastructure, noting the country aims to spend
1.5 trillion dollars on improving its ports,
highways and other facilities in the coming 10
years. — AFP

S Lanka president urges fair vote
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President
Mahinda Rajapakse vowed yesterday to
ensure the first post-war nationwide election goes off peacefully, as he prepared to
face his former army chief after an acrimonious campaign.
Rajapakse urged the authorities to
ensure a free and fair vote in today’s presidential contest amid claims from the
opposition that he plans to rig the result
and is preparing a coup in the event that he
is defeated. “The Sri Lanka government
calls for a peaceful election and stands
committed to taking whatever steps
deemed necessary,” his office said in a
statement.
Rajapakse, who ordered the military
offensive that ended a 37-year conflict
against Tamil rebels in May last year, faces
a strong challenge from Sarath Fonseka,
the army chief who led the troops in battle.
A total of 68,000 police and 250,000
public officials will be on duty to monitor
the election, which is seen as too close to
call. There are no reliable opinion polls in
the Indian Ocean island nation.
In the run-up to the vote, the opposition and government have made claim and
counter-claim about each other’s intentions, raising the prospect of instability and
a contested result. Warning of street
protests and resistance to any attempt by
Rajapakse to steal the election, Fonseka
declared Monday: “If there is a war, we
will face it.” At least five people have been
killed and hundreds wounded during campaigning, according to the private Centre
for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV).
The two candidates, both Sinhalese

nationalists, fell out after the war, with
Fonseka retiring from the military after he
was sidelined by Rajapakse and launching
his surprise bid for the presidency.
Rajapakse called the vote after only
four years of his six-year mandate to try to
harness public acclaim for victory over the

Tamil Tiger rebels, who controlled onethird of Sri Lanka just 10 years ago.
The conflict with the Tigers, who
began fighting for a homeland for the
minority Tamil group in 1972, cost
between 80,000 and 100,000 lives, according to UN estimates. — AFP

VAVUNIYA: This combo made from file photos shows Sri
Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, left, waving at a function to release former Tamil Tiger combatants in Manik Farm in
Vavuniya, Jan 9, 2010, and presidential candidate of the common opposition and former military chief Gen. Sarath Fonseka
waving to his supporters during a public rally in Vavuniya,
Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010. Sri Lanka’s ruling party plans to instigate
violence to keep voters from the ballot box in an attempt to
secure victory during the upcoming presidential election. — AP

Pakistan has long played an
important role in Afghan affairs,
having nurtured the Afghan
Taleban during the 1990s, but
Kabul remains suspicious that
Islamabad is pursuing its own
agenda in the country to the
detriment of Afghanistan.
Masood
Khalili,
Afghanistan’s ambassador to
Turkey, told state news
Anatolian the aim of the meeting was to “forge cooperation
that might lead to reconciliation
in the region. Everybody in the
region is thirsty for peace.”
Karzai, under intense pressure from his Western backers
to strengthen Afghanistan’s
security forces at a time of
worsening violence, is preparing a programme to reintegrate
some Taleban insurgents in
order to encourage them to lay
down arms.
Pakistan is seeking to play a
role in that process. The
Foreign Ministry said on
Saturday it was reaching out to
“all levels” of the Afghan
Taleban in a bid to encourage
peace in its neighbour.
Signaling NATO was open to
a political solution even as US
President Barack Obama sends
an extra 30,000 US troops, the
commander of NATO forces in
Afghanistan said he hopes
increased troop levels will
weaken the Taleban enough
that its leaders will accept a
peace deal and bring the war to
an end.
“As a soldier, my personal
feeling is that there’s been
enough fighting,” Stanley
McChrystal said in an interview
in the Financial Times yesterday.
Karzai
met
Turkey’s
President Abdullah Gul, whose
country has increased its diplomatic role in the Muslim world
since the ruling Islamist-rooted
AK Party took power in 2002.
Gul was to hold separate talks
with Zardari later.
Military and intelligence
officials from Afghanistan and
Pakistan-which have a history
of mutual distrust-were attending the talks.
Obama has emphasised that
success would not be possible
in Afghanistan without the support of Pakistan.
Today Turkey is hosting a
meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbours today to seek a common
approach to the conflict.
British officials say they
want to persuade regional players to work together to help
stabilise Afghanistan.
Turkey has said the foreign
minister of China and officials
from Iran, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
Pakistan will attend as well as
British Foreign Secretary David
Miliband and US Special envoy
Richard Holbrooke’s deputy,
Paul Jones. — Reuters

Mumbai gunman
demands trial by
international court
MUMBAI: The alleged gunman in the 2008 bloody
siege of Mumbai said yesterday he should be tried
by an international court because he does not
expect justice in India.
Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, told a special
court that police had falsely implicated him in the
case. “I should be tried in an international court,”
he told Judge M.L. Tahiliyani.
Ten gunmen rampaged through India’s commercial capital Mumbai in a commando-style attack on
two luxury hotels, a busy train station and a Jewish
center in November 2008. The three-day siege left
166 people dead, and nine of the gunmen were
killed.
Last month, Kasab retracted his confession that
he sprayed gunfire into a crowd at the railroad station. He also said police tortured him into admitting
having a role in the attacks.
Kasab also said yesterday he wanted to call witnesses from Pakistan for his defense, and that he
should be allowed to meet Pakistani officials.
Witnesses would include a passport officer, he said,
without providing other details. The judge asked
him to file a petition through his attorney. Kasab
could face the death penalty if convicted. Murder
and conspiracy to wage war against India are among
the charges he faces.
Kasab told the judge he came to Mumbai as a
tourist and was arrested 20 days before the siege
began. On the day the attacks started, Kasab said
police took him from his cell because he resembled
one of the gunmen. They then shot him to make it
look as if he had been involved in the attacks and
re-arrested him, Kasab said. — AP

President of India, Pratibha
Devisingh Patil addressing to the
nation on the eve of the Republic Day.
My fellow citizens,

O

n the eve of our 61st Republic Day, I extend my
warmest greetings to all of you across the
country and also to those living abroad. To the
members of our Armed Forces and Para-military forces
who guard our frontiers and to our internal security
forces, I extend my special greetings.
26th January, this year marks the completion of six
decades of working, striving and, all along, being guided by the principles and objectives of the Constitution
that was framed after careful deliberations and adopted
in 1950. I often recall the speech of Mahatma Gandhi at
the launch of the Quit India Movement on 8th August,
1942, where he said that power, when it comes, will
belong to the people of India. The wish of the Father of
the Nation found expression in the very opening words
of the Constitution - We, the people of India. This was
a strong affirmation that the impulses of the nation and
its future would be guided by its people. They would
reflect their aspirations and choices, through democratic means. They would also enjoy the fundamental
rights that guarantee their freedoms and dignity. Today,
is a reminder that upholding the values, determining
the direction and propelling the growth of our nation is
a task that must be fulfilled by every citizen of the
country. In the first decade of the 21st century, India
witnessed transformational changes. It also emerged
as a force driving change in the world. Our achievements and experiences have, indeed, brought the
nation to a definitional stage, where the promise of a
bright future as a developed and progressive nation is
for us to claim, as we all work together with conviction
and commitment. However, as we overcome deficiencies and convert our strengths into an energetic force,
we must remain deeply conscious of what we must
preserve and what we must change.
Foremost amongst what we must continue with, is
our democratic principles and way of life. We have ably
demonstrated that we are a functioning democracy, by
time and again, choosing our governments through the
ballot and by taking democracy to the grassroots. Also,
as we are aware, democracy is very much more
demanding. It is the rule of law. It is the rule of reason.
And, as India has shown to the world, it is the rule of
non-violence. Democracy involves a pattern of behavior, in which every individual must act responsibly,
show respect towards dissimilar opinions and address
differences in a constructive and accommodative manner. This will build harmony and tolerance - values
which are intrinsic to our philosophy; these form the
bedrock of a society that embraces the diversity of language, religion and culture to create a composite whole.
These values must be followed uninterruptedly in a
nation that is, as vast and as varied as ours. Secularism,
our constitutionally chosen path, entails respect for all
religions. Its place in our national life is unalterable.
India is a land where followers of different religions
have lived together for centuries. We must maintain
social cohesion. Our tradition of living in accord with
each other must continue to form an integral part of the
rhythm of life of our future generations.
Belonging to a civilization that has deep reverence
towards nature, we must also be sensitive inhabitants
of the Planet, in which climate change has become a
major challenge. We must judiciously use its resources,
work to conserve its rich flora and fauna as well as
adopt environment friendly approaches. Use of energy
efficient technologies and renewable sources of energy,
are some steps that can reduce the carbon footprint.
Dear Citizens,
Our nation has made significant strides. We are the
fourth largest economy of the world in terms of purchasing power parity. Our target of achieving a double
digit growth rate is plausible and realistic, given our
impressive performance during the last decade and our
resilience during the global economic downturn. We
should continue with policies that promote growth, and
also take growth patterns to the bottom of the pyramid
and, to those currently outside its purview.
Empowering the poor and the disadvantaged, enabling
them to move up the economic ladder, to join the ranks
of the prosperous, is a task that must be accomplished
by all of us. Women need to be made full and equal partners. The inclusive growth strategy, which we have
chosen, can make our growth process equitable and
sustainable.
The roadmap to inclusive growth requires social
justice that can be delivered through an effective social
sector infrastructure. It should make quality education
and good health facilities available to all citizens, along
with social services and job opportunities. This, in turn,
will create a human resource base which has the skills,
knowledge and capacity to work productively. Hence,
our attention must remain focused on this, especially as
we have a young population. They must be nurtured
and prepared for taking up their responsibilities. Future
growth in all sectors will depend on knowledge workers and skilled workforces. They can make our economy dynamic, our service sector efficient and competitive, our manufacturing industries broad based and our
agriculture and allied sectors strong. Furthermore,
integrating and developing linkages between sectors,
say agriculture and industry, will further reinforce
growth. These linkages can be fortified by having connectivity at various levels. For a nation which is the
seventh largest in geographical terms and the second
largest in terms of population, our existing physical
infrastructure is inadequate. This constrains and limits
connectivity. We have to change this situation. The
number of bridges, roads, harbours as well as our
power generation capacity and transport facilities,
among others, require extensive additions. But, do not
forget that along with these structures of cement, steel
and mortar, it is also important to bridge our differences, build roads to connect hearts and minds, harbour compassion, generate goodwill towards all and
transport these feelings to strengthen the unity of the
nation. We will also have to create an atmosphere for
our citizens to exercise their rights and tell them to
perform their duties as well. This is important to make
the development of a democratic nation of over one billion people, participatory and sustainable. In the next
decade, not only must we witness the speedy building
up of infrastructure, but also a greater cohesiveness
among citizens.
A bottleneck and an impediment in bringing about
the desired results, for which policies and schemes
have been formulated and huge allocation of funds
made, is weak implementation and corruption in the
system. The causes of the chronic ailment of tardy
implementation have to be treated. There should be

accountability for lack of implementation of projects,
programmes and schemes. This is critical for bringing
about positive change.
Public-Private Partnerships and SHGs, that is SelfHelp Groups, are important mechanisms for outcomeoriented action and for creating a wide network of
stakeholders for growth. There have been numerous
examples of how women in urban and rural areas have
been able to become financially self-reliant through the
SHG route. A movement towards universalisation of
SHGs, that brings within its ambit all eligible women,
can be a powerful instrument for the economic empowerment of women and for inclusive growth. Facilitation
of their formation and functioning will, thus, create a
wave of progress and change.
Dear Citizens,
The world over, as also in our country, there is a rising demand for food-grains. This foretells the need for
an intense focus on increasing agriculture productivity
to ensure food availability, particularly of agricultural
produces which are in short supply, to avoid spiraling
food prices. To achieve this very important objective, I
call for urgent steps towards a Second Green
Revolution. There should be use of new technologies,
better seeds, improved farming practices, effective
water management techniques, as well as more
intense frameworks for connecting the farmer with the
scientific community, with lending institutions and with
markets. Our farmers are ready and willing to work,
earn and learn. We have to respond positively and do
some “out of the box thinking”. Higher agriculture
incomes will improve the living standards of the over
145 million rural households, in the over six lakh villages of the country. With higher income levels, the
rural economy will generate demand and provide impetus for growth in other sectors. Recognizing this reality, we have to involve the agriculture economy more
pro-actively into the growth process, both as a centre of
production and as a generator of demand for various
products and services. There are many complementarities that exist between farming communities and the
corporate world because both are private enterprises.
The possibilities of win-win partnerships between
industry and agriculture should be explored. For example, the food processing industry when located close to
agricultural areas can transform India’s rural landscape.
Currently, food processing in India is as low as 10 percent of production, as compared to 65 percent to 80
percent, generally seen in the developed countries.
Other agro-based industries would be equally important as propellers of growth. The question is how to
attract farmers into such partnerships, which do not
adversely affect, but rather keep the interests of farmers in the forefront and take into account their various
sensitivities, particularly about their land-holdings.
This needs to be done in a farmer-friendly manner and
by creating awareness in the farming community. Some
Indian companies have understood that linking farmers
to industrial units would be beneficial to both. They
have developed interesting models of engagement with
the farming community. We should study these experiences, as we look at viable options that suit Indian conditions for harnessing the potential of village
economies.
Dear Citizens,
Today, the optimum use of capital or labour or
resources across the entire spectrum of our national
activity is dependent on cutting-edge technologies and
technological breakthroughs. We need technologies for
more efficient and cleaner energy, for our industry and
agriculture. India has to chalk out strategies that will
promote research and development resulting in innovative methods and techniques. The quality of research
in our country must be upgraded to build knowledge
structures. I think the nation should take this up as an
urgent calling. A knowledge economy requires an education system that encourages creativity and a capacity
to think in a novel fashion. Also, our research institutions should join global knowledge networks to keep
themselves abreast of worldwide advancements in
research. Technology should reach a broader section of
our society, and also the movement of grassroots innovations should receive encouragement. A change
which is required, and of which I have spoken often is
the eradication of social malpractices in particular those
related to discrimination against women. These pose a
hindrance on our path to building a more progressive
and equitable nation. We should follow a positive agenda for the empowerment of women. A change in our
mindsets will be important to remove prejudices and
create equal opportunities for all citizens. This is
essential for our inclusive growth agenda and for tapping the full potential of our population.
In any mission, particularly one as complex and
challenging as nation building, as has been said by our
first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, “We
have to labour, and to work, and to work hard, to give
reality to our dreams.” For this, motivational levels
have to be kept high.
Media can have an important influence on how people see the country. With relentless advances in technology, media is now an integral part of our daily lives.
It can create awareness by bringing information to the
people, getting them to reflect, and making them realize their responsibilities towards the nation. With a
media that plays a constructive role, people would be
inspired to take actions that would contribute to building the nation and also to learn about the benefits of
positive actions.
For growth, an environment of security is essential.
Government is committed to maintain high vigil and
take appropriate measures to address internal security
challenges. Our country has been a target of terrorism
for more than two decades. Government has taken and
will continue to take necessary steps to tackle threats
emanating from terrorism. It will also continue to work
with the international community to combat this menace. As in the past, in the future also, the voice of India
in the world would be a voice for peace, a voice for
development, and a voice of hope. In the global arena,
we will seek a change in the structure of multilateral
institutions, so that they reflect contemporary realities.
We will continue to cooperate with the international
community to deal with global issues. We will seek to
build friendly relations with countries in our region and
those across the world.
As 2009 came to a close, there have been many
analyses about what are the possible prospects of the
next decade for India. Some refer to it as the deciding
decade, the decade of reckoning. On reflection, I fully
agree that it will be so. It must, therefore, mean a
decade in which all Indians must do their work with a
sense of responsibility, discipline, integrity of mind and
purpose as well as with a spirit of cooperation. We will
have to inspire our young generation so that they are
virtuous, with good character and a sense of fellow feeling towards others. We must channelise all our efforts
towards the goal of taking the country to a higher level
of all round national development and not rest till we
achieve our goal. We can then be proud that we have
performed our duty and borne our responsibility well.
It is said that, fortune is an outcome of good work and
can slip away, if we are lax in our work. I am reminded
of a few inspirational lines:With these words, I once again wish all fellow citizens peace, prosperity and progress on the occasion of
our Republic Day.
JAI HIND.

13

NEWS

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Iraq executes Chemical Ali
Continued from Page 1

ISTANBUL: A woman walks in snow-covered Istanbul yesterday. — AP

Man hurls shoe at Bashir
KHARTOUM: A Sudanese
man hurled his shoe at
President Omar Al-Bashir yesterday but missed him, witnesses said, adding the assailant was
promptly arrested. The man,
who was in his 40s, threw the
footwear at Bashir in a hallway
of the Friendship Hall, where
the president hosts guests, witnesses said on condition of
anonymity. Security men quickly detained the shoe thrower.
He was later identified as
Adil Mohammed Fath AlRahman Mahjub, a man who
once held a position in government and suffers from psychiatric disorders, the official news
agency SUNA said without
elaborating. “He wanted to

deliver a letter to the president... but was intercepted by
guards of the president who
told him the time and place
were not appropriate. He then
took off his shoe and threw it,”
the agency said. The man was
otherwise unarmed, SUNA
said, adding the shoe thrower
was treated at a psychiatric hospital before being released to
his family.
“The man was close to the
podium and threw the shoe but
it didn’t reach him,” said one
witness, saying the incident
appeared to shock the dozens of
officials gathered for the conference on strategic planning for
governing Sudan. “He seemed
calm, even after he was arrest-

ed,” said another witness.
Witnesses said journalists at
the event had recording equipment and cameras taken from
them by security guards after
the incident.
Bashir has ruled Sudan
since seizing power in a military coup in 1989 and he is
standing for re-election in April,
when Sudan holds its first general election in 24 years. The
president, who is wanted by the
International Criminal Court for
alleged war crimes in the
restive Darfur region, is the latest leader targeted by a shoethrower.
In the best known incident,
Iraqi journalist Muntazer AlZaidi threw his shoe at then US

president George W Bush on
Dec 14, 2008, during his
farewell visit to Baghdad. Zaidi
said at the time it was a
“farewell kiss” for Bush. He
was jailed for nine months but
flown out of the country after
being released for his own
security. The assault caused
massive embarrassment to
Bush and his host, Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, particularly since throwing a shoe
at someone is considered especially insulting and humiliating
in Arab culture. Other officials
who have had shoes thrown at
them include Chinese Premier
Wen Jiabao while on a visit to
Britain and Israel’s ambassador
to Sweden. — Agencies

Karroubi recognizes Ahmadinejad as prez
Continued from Page 1
I recognise the president.”
Karroubi, along with main
opposition leader Mir Hossein
Mousavi, had earned the
wrath of the Islamic republic’s
hardliners over the past eight
months for vociferously campaigning
against
Ahmadinejad’s re-election. He
was heavily criticised for
alleging that several protesters who had demonstrated
against Ahmadinejad were
raped while in prison.
Karroubi’s new stance
comes a day after his political
party, Etemad Melli, said the
cleric would back all the antigovernment remarks he has
been making since the election dispute erupted. “It is
necessary for you to know
that Mr Karroubi is standing
firm and tall and has evidence
for all his comments,” the party said on its website
Sahamnews.org and had even
called for permission to stage

demonstrations.
In a separate statement
yesterday, Karroubi made
clear he had not fundamentally changed his views on the
election and its aftermath.
Karroubi said he was “ready
to pay a higher price over
insisting on my position and
I’m not afraid of pressures,”
according to a report by the
pro-reform Parlemannews
website. “In the end, those
within the establishment who
were planning to eliminate the
people’s role will have no other choice but listening to people’s demands and accepting
the people’s sovereignty,” it
quoted Karroubi as saying. “In
an interview ... today I said be
certain that Ahmadinejad’s
government will not last four
years,” an aid to Karroubi
quoted the cleric as saying,
according to the opposition
Jaras website.
Karroubi and Mousavi led
the opposition movement
despite Khamenei endorsing

Ahmadinejad’s victory at a key
Friday prayer sermon on June
19, just a week after polling
day. On July 1, reacting to the
confirmation of the election
result by the Guardians
Council, which rules on election results, Karroubi called
Ahmadinejad’s victory illegitimate. “I do not consider the
government coming from this
election as legitimate and will
not participate in the endorsement ceremony,” he had said
ahead of the official ceremony
to endorse Ahmadinejad as
president for a second term.
Iranian political analyst
Mohammad Saleh Sedghian
told AFP yesterday that
Karroubi’s latest stance was
an indication of moves
towards
reconciliation
between hardliners and
reformists. “We find that they
(opposition groups) are leaning towards recognising the
Ahmadinejad government, but
they keep objecting to the
mechanism in which the elec-

tion was held,” Sedghian said.
“The trend is towards reconciliation, which the reformists
and several moderates have
called for.”
The post-election unrest
against Ahmadinejad led by
Karroubi and Mousavi saw
hundreds of thousands of
demonstrators take to the
streets in protest against the
president and sometimes even
Khamenei. The demonstrations, which erupted soon
after the election, shook the
very pillars of the Islamic
regime and split the nation’s
clergy. Protesters have taken
every opportunity since to
stage
anti-government
demonstrations, the latest on
Dec 27 as the nation commemorated the Shiite ritual of
Ashoura. Dozens of Iranians
have been killed and wounded
in such protests since June,
and hundreds have also been
put on trial accused of
attempting to revolt against
the regime. — Agencies

FM assures MPs on Iraq border houses
Continued from Page 1
Sheikh Mohammad expressed hope
that the Iraqi general elections in March
would lead to forming an Iraqi government
that will continue to hold the same ideas of
living in peace with its neighbours.
On Yemen, Sheikh Mohammad called
for helping Yemen to confront external
threats, adding that GCC members cannot
remain spectators while one of its members - Saudi Arabia - is fighting against the
Yemeni Houthi rebels. He said that GCC
foreign ministers and some Arab ministers
will take part in the international conference on Yemen in London. Sheikh
Mohammad said that he also briefed the
members on relations with Iran, especially
after the visit of the Kuwaiti prime minister to Tehran and Iranian parliament
speaker Ali Larijani’s visit to Kuwait,
which began yesterday. He stressed on the
importance of maintaining a direct and

open dialogue between the GCC states
and Iran in order “to express our hopes
and fears and also listen to our Iranian
brothers”.
On his arrival, Larijani told reporters
that the Kuwaiti-Iranian relations have
been strong for many years and remain
strong despite the sensitive situation. He
added that his talks in Kuwait will focus on
political, economic and cultural relations.
Meanwhile, the Assembly’s financial
and economic affairs committee yesterday
approved amendments to the 5-year
development plan which was approved in
the first reading about a week ago. MP
Abdulrahman Al-Anjari said the committee
will meet again on Thursday to study
more amendments and then call for a special session of the Assembly to pass the
plan in the second and final reading.
Also, the women affairs committee yesterday approved an article in the draft law
on women’s civil and social rights that

requires the government to provide adequate housing to Kuwaiti women married
to non-Kuwaitis in addition to divorced
women and widows who have children.
Head of the committee MP Maasouma AlMubarak said the committee has
expressed its support for the government’s proposal to set up the housing fund
for Kuwaiti women.
She said the committee will hold another meeting on Jan 30 to discuss parts in
the bill that relate to social security rules
for women. She however said the committee expressed reservations on a proposal
that calls for granting Kuwaiti housewives
a monthly salary, saying that children
should not be a barrier for women to go to
work. In a related development, MP
Mubarak proposed that the government
should provide permanent residence for
children of Kuwaiti women married to
non-Kuwaitis, and also to their husbands
after five years of marriage.

Yemen Houthis offer truce to Saudi Arabia
Continued from Page 1
The International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC) said yesterday that
humanitarian conditions in northern
Yemen are worse than they have ever been
and that fighting had “dramatically worsened” the fate of Yemeni civilians. Yemen
is also in the throes of a crackdown on AlQaeda whose regional wing is based in the
country, while also trying to contain simmering unrest from a southern separatist
movement. Western powers and Riyadh
fear Yemen will become a failed state,
allowing a resurgent Al-Qaeda to exploit
chaos to use the country as a base for more
international attacks.
Yemen’s Interior Ministry said on its
website that around 30 suspected Al-Qaeda
militants were killed recently in a campaign against the group, but did not say
when the deaths took place. Al-Qaeda also
killed three soldiers in the south of the
country in a Sunday attack, a security

source said yesterday, while six people
including three soldiers were wounded in
clashes with separatists, according to a
local official.
Yemen’s foreign minister Abubakr AlQirbi told Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper yesterday that the country was asking
for help in facing Al-Qaeda, but not against
Shiite rebels or southern secessionists.
“We are asking for help when it comes to
Al-Qaeda and development, but in interior
issues we look to treat them as interior
issues,” he said. Qirbi denied US jets had
been carrying out strikes on Yemeni soil
but said Yemen needed practical aid from
Washington. “We are asking for more
means of support to the (security) forces in
the fight against terrorism in Yemen, such
as the provision of aircraft, helicopters,
means of transport, means of communication,” he said.
In the southern province of Dhalea,
where secessionists staged a strike to
protest against government marginalisa-

tion, six people including three soldiers
were wounded in clashes between government forces and activists, a local official
said. A dozen people were wounded in similar clashes the previous day. Also in
Dhalea, five soldiers were wounded when
armed men attacked their dawn patrol,
local media reported.
Shops and markets were closed yesterday as part of a general strike aimed at forcing separatist grievances onto the agenda of
a Yemen conference in London on
Wednesday to coordinate counter-terrorism
and aid efforts for the troubled country.
Protests where southern secessionists
clash with the central government’s security forces represent a growing threat for
President Ali Abdullah Saleh. North and
south Yemen united in 1990 under Saleh,
who had been president of the north since
1978. The bumpy merger led to a brief 1994
civil war won by the north. Southerners say
state jobs and resources have gone to the
north ever since. — Reuters

The first bomb struck near the
Palestine and Sheraton hotels in Abu
Nawaz, close to where a giant statue of
Saddam was symbolically toppled almost
seven years ago, at around 3:30 pm (1230
GMT), an interior ministry official said.
The second and third blasts just minutes
later targeted the Babylon Hotel in the
central district of Karrada and the Hamra
hotel in Jadriyah, in the south of the capital, he added. Iraqi military spokesman in
Baghdad Major General Qassim Atta said
all three bombings were suicide attacks.
The streets leading to the hotels were
immediately sealed off, preventing journalists from approaching. A security
source said armed clashes broke out near
the Hamra in what appeared to be a
diversionary attack before the suicide
bomber drove his minibus at the hotel
seconds later and detonated it. The first
explosion in Abu Nawaz shook ground
miles away from the site of the blast and
sent plumes of smoke rising hundreds of
metres into the sky. Yesterday’s attacks
differed from recent high-profile bombings in Baghdad in that they targeted
hotels, one of the capital’s few remaining
symbols of tourism, rather than government buildings.
The hotel bombings were followed
around 90 minutes later by a government
announcement that Majid had been executed. Majid was sentenced to death on
Jan 17 for ordering the gassing of Kurds
in the northeastern town of Halabja
which killed an estimated 5,000 people
and was one of the worst crimes of
Saddam’s iron-fisted regime. “I was happy to see the news of the execution on
television,” said Kamal Abdelkadir, 24,

who lost his parents, five sisters and a
brother in the atrocity and who continues
to require medical treatment for his
injuries.
Fadhel Rifat, 27, who now lives in
Sulaimaniyah, the eponymous Kurdish
province in which Halabja is situated, was
also just a young boy at the time of the
attack. “My father and many relatives
died because of Chemical Ali,” he said. “I
am happy that he is dead.” Three-quarters of the victims at Halabja were
women and children, in what is thought
to be the deadliest ever gas attack against
civilians.
The conviction for the gas attack, that
came as the Iran-Iraq war drew to a close,
was the fourth time that Majid, who was
arrested in Aug 2003, had received a
death sentence. Handing down the ruling,
Judge Abud Mustapha Al-Hamani branded
Majid’s offences as “deliberate murder, a
crime against humanity” when the verdict
was delivered amid muffled applause in
the courtroom. Majid’s execution had previously been held up by legal wrangling. It
had first been due to be carried out by Oct
2007 but was delayed so as not to coincide
with the holy month of Ramadan.
Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki said
Majid’s execution was warranted as he
was “one of the worst henchmen of the
former regime, who committed heinous
crimes against the Iraqi people”. “His
name is associated with the mass graves
that fill Iraqi land from north to south,”
Maliki said. “This turns another dark page
in the genocide, repression and crimes
against humanity committed by Saddam
and his agents.”
Saddam, Majid’s close cousin, was
himself hanged in Dec 2006 for the killing
of 148 Shiite villagers after an attempt on

his life in 1982. In contrast with Majid’s
hanging, however, footage of that execution posted on the Internet showed
shouts of applause and barracking of the
dictator before and as he died. Majid
earned his moniker for ordering poisonous gas attacks in a brutal scorched-earth
campaign of bombings and mass deportations that killed an estimated 182,000
Kurds in the 1980s.
He had already been sentenced to hang
for genocide over the Kurdish offensives
when in Dec 2008 he received a second
death sentence for war crimes committed
during the ill-fated 1991 Shiite uprising in
southern Iraq. Last March, the Iraqi High
Tribunal handed down a third death sentence over the 1999 murders of dozens of
Shiites in the Sadr City district of
Baghdad and in the central shrine city of
Najaf.
Majid orchestrated the Halabja attack
when in March 1988, Iraqi jets swooped
over the small town and for five hours
sprayed it with a deadly cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun,
Sarin and VX. Considered Saddam’s righthand man and bearing a strong resemblance to the former dictator, he was a
member of the decision-making
Revolutionary Command Council and was
regularly called upon to crush rebellion.
As Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran
came to an end in 1988, fighters from the
rebel Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, with
backing from Tehran, took over the farming community of Halabja, near the border. As Saddam’s enforcer, Majid ordered
the gas attack to crush the uprising. He
said he took action against the Kurds, who
had sided with Iraq’s enemy in the war,
for the sake of Iraqi security. He refused
to express remorse. — AFP

Ethiopia jet crashes off Beirut
Continued from Page 1
Pieces of the plane and debris were
washing ashore in the hours after the
crash, including passenger seats, a baby
sandal, a fire extinguisher, suitcases and
bottles of medicine. Marla Pietton, wife of
the French ambassador to Lebanon Denis
Pietton, was on the plane, the embassy
said. Most of the Lebanese passengers
were Shiites from southern Lebanon who
have business interests in Africa.
Helicopters and naval ships were
scrambled for a rescue effort as waves
reaching a half-meter slammed into the
shore. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad
Hariri announced a day of mourning and
closed schools and government offices.
Ethiopian Airlines has regular flights to
Lebanon, catering for business clients and
the thousands of Ethiopians who work
there as domestic helpers. Some passengers had been en route to Angola and other African countries.
Col Dave L apan, a Pentagon
spokesman, said the US military has
deployed a guided-missile destroyer, the
USS-Ramage, as well as a P-3 surveillance
aircraft to help with search and rescue
efforts. A statement from the defense ministry in Cyprus, which sent reinforcements to help in the search, said 34 bodies
have been recovered so far.
Ethiopian Airlines’ CEO Girma Wake
told journalists in Addis Ababa that he had
no information on the fate of those on
board or about the cause of the crash. He
said the aircraft had been serviced on Dec
25 and passed inspection. He also said the
plane had been leased in September from
New York-based CIT Aerospace. CIT

spokesman declined to comment and
referred questions to Ethiopian Airlines.
The plane was carrying 83 passengers
and 7 crew, Lebanese officials said. Aridi,
the transportation minister, identified the
passengers as 54 Lebanese, 22 Ethiopians,
one Iraqi, one Syrian, one Canadian of
Lebanese origin, one Russian of Lebanese
origin, a French woman and two Britons of
Lebanese origin. Ethiopian Airlines
reported that there were 82 passengers
and eight crew; the discrepancy could not
immediately be explained.
The Boeing 737 is considered one of
the safest planes in airline service. The jet
was first introduced in the 1960s, and
today is the workhorse on many shortand medium-range routes. Still, over the
past 15 years it was involved in a series of
incidents and crashes linked to problems
with a valve in the rudder assembly. The
valve reportedly would malfunction and
cause the rudder to turn independently of
the pilot’s commands.
The problem was considered resolved
after operators of older Boeing 737s were
ordered to carry out inspections and
upgrades of the critical rudder control systems. Sidney Dekker, a professor of flight
safety at the School of Aviation at Lund
University in Sweden, said the rudder
problem has been corrected by the manufacturer and that he’d be “hugely surprised” if it had anything to do with the
crash.
Dekker, himself a 737 pilot, said that if
reports of an engine fire proved to be correct, the accident could have resulted from
a loss of control at a relatively low altitude
where it would have been difficult to
recover. He noted that the 737’s engines

were overpowered in order to fulfill performance requirements in the event of the
loss of an engine at takeoff. This tended to
produce a turning movement of the entire
aircraft - known as yaw - toward the dead
engine. Poor visibility in low clouds combined with high winds may have contributed to the problem faced by the pilots
trying to regain control, he said.
Aviation safety analyst Chris Yates said
it was far too early to say what caused the
crash, but he noted that modern aircraft
are built to withstand all but the foulest
weather conditions. “One wouldn’t have
thought that a nasty squall in and of itself
would be the prime cause of an accident
like this,” said Yates, an analyst based in
Manchester, England. He said reports of
fire could suggest “some cataclysmic failure of one of the engines” or that something had been sucked into the engine,
such as a bird or debris.
The state-owned Ethiopian Airlines has
long had a reputation for high-quality service compared to other African airlines,
with two notable crashes in more than 20
years. A hijacked Ethiopian Airlines jet
crash-landed off the Comoros Islands in
the Indian Ocean when it ran out of fuel in
November 1996, killing 126 of the 175
people aboard. In September 1988, an
Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed shortly after
taking off when it ran into a flock of birds,
killing 31 of the 104 people on board.
Ethiopian Airlines announced last week
that it signed an agreement with Boeing to
buy 10 more of the 737-800s at an estimated $767 million. The order will expand the
airline’s fleet from the 36 aircraft it has
now - not including the 737-800 that
crashed yesterday. — Agencies

Israel doesn’t dare strike Iran: Larijani
Continued from Page 1
On relations between Iran and Saudi
Arabia amidst accusations that Iran is
supporting the Houthi rebels in Yemen,
Larijani said “enemies of the Islamic
world always try to divide these countries”. He accused these “enemy”
nations of instigating sectarian hatred
between Shiites and Sunnis, as well as
fueling instability in Iraq and other areas.

“You noticed how one of the clerics
insulted Imam Sistani - these practices
are carried by the enemies of the Islamic
nation,” he added.
Larijani denounced accusations that
Iran is supporting the Houthis as “false
and baseless”. However, he added, “We
have good relations with the countries in
the region, and this applies to Saudi
Arabia too. Only out of amity we told the
Saudis that what is being done against

the Houthis is not for their best interest.”
Larijani also spoke on the post-election unrest in Iran. “There is no problem
in Iran. The situation in Iran is stable,
democracy in Iran is serious, and that’s
why you see that the negotiations
between the two groups are also serious.
This might appear to others as something not normal, but in Iran, it’s a normal and regular thing,” he said.

Bodies pile up as Haiti begs for aid
Continued from Page 1
“The country is ravaged, I ask myself
how it can be rebuilt after this catastrophe.
The Haitian government is very corrupt,”
said Gesnel Faustin, 29, living in a tent outside the destroyed presidential palace. “But
if the United States, France and Canada get
together for reconstruction, it will work.”
In Montreal, Haitian Prime Minister
Jean-Max Bellerive said the top priority
was to “satisfy the vital needs of victims
like food and water, shelter and health
care” but that longer-term needs were
huge. “I just want to say that the people of
Haiti will need to be helped to face this
colossal work of reconstruction,” Bellerive
told officials including his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper and US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton. Harper said
rebuilding Haiti would take “at least 10
years of hard work” following the 7.0-magnitude quake which struck on January 12.
Oxfam and The World Council of
Churches called for the cancellation of
Haiti’s $890 million of foreign debt. The
United Nations said yesterday that it has
so far received pledges of more than $270
million in emergency relief funding for
Haiti, representing nearly half of its target.

In ravaged Port-au-Prince, Health Minister
Alex Larsen said 90,000 bodies had already
been counted and the final toll was expected to be around 150,000, with around one
million homeless. But the country’s communications minister said 150,000 bodies
had already been collected - the differing
figures underscoring the disorder gripping
the Haitian government.
With the search for buried survivors
officially over, one rescue team’s hopes of
success 13 days after the quake were
dashed when signs of life picked up by
radar turned out to be a false alarm caused
by a worm-filled body. Rescuers have
saved 133 people from the debris, including a man who survived for 11 days on cola
and snacks. Looters continued to plague
Haiti’s wrecked commercial areas but in
less-affected districts residents tried to
return to some kind of normality yesterday,
with people going to work and shops
reopening.
The UN said more than 235,000
Haitians have taken advantage of free buses to flee the filthy conditions in Port-auPrince for more hygienic camps outside
the capital. Larsen said tents were being
readied for 400,000 quake victims at minivillages outside the capital that will initially

hold 20,000 people, and in the long term
accommodate around one million.
But the mass exodus is putting a huge
burden on small towns like Saint Marc,
some 80 km from the capital, where 10,000
refugees were lodging with friends,
strangers or in churches. “My house was
destroyed. We slept on the pavement near
the wounded, we had to leave,” said
Magalie Esteverle, a 43-year-old dressmaker with three children staying with a
distant cousin of her husband. The situation has prompted European nations to
agree to send some 300 police officers to
help keep order and ease aid distribution.
The international aid effort came under
fire from Italy’s public safety chief, sent to
Haiti last week, who criticized a lack of
leadership in the response to the quake.
Guido Bertolaso, who led the response to
the L’Aquila earthquake in April 2009, told
Italian television it was “a terrible situation
that could have been managed much better” and said the US force had “too many
officers” to find a capable leader. The
United States has taken a frontline role in
the disaster relief effort, sending in 20,000
troops and anchoring a hospital ship offshore, while the United Nations is also
heavily involved. — AFP

he Supreme Court has
opened the door to a
new era of big and possibly shadowy election spending, rolled back anti-corruption laws. In the middle of it all
will be voters, trying to figure
out who’s telling the truth.
The court’s ruling Thursday
lets corporate America start
advertising candidates much
as they market products and
tell viewers to vote for or
against them. While it almost
certainly will lead to a barrage
of hard-hitting TV ads in the
2010 elections, its implications reach far beyond that.
The ruling was a victory
for the US Chamber of
Commerce, the AFL-CIO
trade union confederation, the
National Rifle Association and
other interest groups most
likely to run ads with money
from their treasuries. It’s
unlikely major corporations
would want their name on an
ad, but they can avoid that by
giving money to interest
groups, who would then run
ads and disclose the spending
under the groups’ names.
It also presents a new
option to wealthy individuals
who were allowed to spend
millions on their own to run
election-time candidate ads
before, but now can join forces
to do so and get more bang for
their bucks. The court’s 5-4
opinion represents the latest
development in the cycle of
scandal-law-loophole that has
typified the United States’
approach to campaign finance
regulation.
From the corporate titans
of the early 20th century bribing candidates, to Watergate
in the 1970s, Democratic
fundraising scandals during
the Clinton years in the 1990s
and most recently, the Jack
Abramoff influence-peddling
case, Congress has periodically tried to rein in political
spending only to have loopholes emerge or political players mount successful constitutional challenges to the
rules.
The court seemed to
sweep those concerns aside,
saying that it doubted election-time ads could lead to the
corruption of lawmakers and
that in any case, proponents of
the ban hadn’t provided any
proof of corruption. Campaign
finance watchdogs predict
members of Congress now
will cast their votes on controversial legislation with an eye
to whether their position on it
risks inviting a barrage of special-interest ads against them
before the election, or on the
flip side, could draw outside
spending favorable to them.
“I just think the court got it
dead wrong if it thinks that a
$10 million expenditure in a
campaign can’t buy influence
of a corrupting nature the
same way that a $10 million
contribution can,” said Fred
Wertheimer, president of
Democracy 21, who pressed
for the ban on election-season
corporate- and union-financed
ads that the court swept away.
For those like Wertheimer
who believe the threat of corruption justifies restrictions
on campaign money, it could
get even worse. Heartened by

the court’s view that corporations have the same freespeech rights as citizens,
opponents of campaign finance
restrictions think the time is
ripe to press the justices to go
still further and do something
not allowed since the robberbaron bribery scandals of a
century ago: let corporations
and unions give money directly to candidates. “If all speakers are going to be treated the
same, why wouldn’t a corporation be able to make a contribution to a candidate” just as
individuals and political action
committees can? asked Jim
Bopp, a conservative lawyer
involved in several lawsuits
that have scaled back campaign finance rules over the
past few years, including the
one decided Thursday.
Bopp thinks the conservative-leaning court might even
go for a case arguing that
donors should be able to give
as much money as they want
to a candidate: “You certainly
have some justices who say
that the contribution limits
cannot be imposed at all.” The
ruling could bring more than
office politics to the workplace: Bopp reads it to permit
corporations and unions to
speak freely about elections to
employees and authorize partisan politicking on their property, rather than stop at simply encouraging workers to
vote, as they’ve had to do until
now. Just as opponents of
campaign finance regulation
are considering further challenges, campaign finance
watchdogs and their allies in
Congress plan to pursue legislation to try to deal with
Wednesday’s ruling. What
they could do to restrict corporate and union campaign ads
after the nation’s highest
court called a ban unconstitutional is unclear. And in the
middle of it all are voters, the
people whose opinions the
new spending will seek to
influence. The court seemed
to agree with the US Chamber
of Commerce’s contention
that voters want more election ads and that they are
craving the viewpoints and
information that will be presented in them.
But if the country’s experience in the years before the
McCain-Feingold law, when
corporations and unions
poured millions of dollars into
election-time ads that targeted candidates but stopped
short of calling for their election or defeat, is any indication, much of the new ad
spending will likely be aimed
at turning voters against a particular candidate, rather than
urging them to vote for one.
That may please voters
who do not like the candidate
anyway, but it could turn off
some voters so much they
tune out. Getting key voting
blocs to stay home on Election
Day can be as important as
getting voters to turn out.
The ruling leaves intact major
parts of a hard-won 2002 campaign finance law, but it is
unclear what will happen with
those in coming months. The
Republican
National
Committee is challenging one
of the law’s pillars, a ban on
corporate and union donations
to political parties. — AP

All articles appearing on these pages are the
personal opinion of the writers. Kuwait Times
takes no responsibility for views expressed
therein. Kuwait Times invites readers to voice
their opinions. Please send submissions via
email to: opinion@kuwaittimes.net or via
snail mail to PO Box 1301 Safat, Kuwait. The
editor reserves the right to edit any submission as necessary.

‘Silent pandemic’ will force drug price rethink
By Kate Kelland

A

“silent pandemic” of chronic
disease is creeping up on poor
countries and will force pharmaceutical firms to take a more tiered
approach to pricing some of their most
lucrative medicines. Drugs for diseases
which were previously dominant only
in the rich, well-fed world, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, are
increasingly in demand in poorer
nations in Asia and Africa, whose populations are now living longer.
But the price of many of these medicines and their unsuitability for emerging markets are high barriers to access.
And yet unless those hurdles are overcome, experts say, chronic diseases
could swamp developing health systems and kill many millions - and the
hopes
of
drugmakers
like
GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and SanofiAventis of supplying vast new markets
in emerging economies will struggle to
come to fruition. Discounting prices for
poorer countries, a move already made
by some big drug firms, is a start. But
pharmaceutical bosses will also be
under pressure to join patent pools to
promote downward price pressure on
drugs for major chronic diseases by
increasing the number of producers,
and may face legal challenges to force
them to allow in more generic competition. “Until now companies had been
able to separate out drugs that are
needed in developing countries from
drugs that primarily make up their market in rich countries,” Tido von
Schoen-Angerer, director of Medecins
Sans Frontieres’ campaign for access to
essential medicines, told Reuters in an
interview. “But the divide which saw
infectious diseases as primarily affecting the poor and chronic diseases

affecting the rich is now changing, and
that will demand a change of strategy.”
Global health projections leave little
doubt that chronic diseases are rapidly
overtaking infectious diseases, such as
malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis (TB), as
the world’s biggest killers - a shift
emphasised by a recent World Health
Organisation (WHO) report on global
health risks. It said populations are ageing partly due to success against infectious diseases, and changing patterns of
food, alcohol and tobacco consumption
are creating a “double burden” for poor
nations, piling chronic diseases on top
of infectious diseases.
The World Economic Forum’s 2010
global risks report, published ahead of
its annual meeting in Davos next week,
characterised the shift as a “silent pandemic”. It said that while deaths from
infectious diseases, maternal conditions and poor nutrition will fall by 3
percent in the next decade, deaths from
chronic disease will increase by 71 percent. Cases of diabetes, heart disease
and stroke, for which major weight gain
is a big risk factor, are predicted to rise
rapidly as the obesity epidemic takes
hold in the developing world.
Diabetes, which the WHO says
accounts for 5 percent of all deaths
globally, with around 80 percent in
developing nations, is seen rising by 42
percent from 2005 levels by 2015 in
Africa, and by 39 percent in the same
time frame in southeast Asia. Cancer is
already a bigger killer in developing
countries than TB, malaria and AIDS
combined and experts see a doubling of
global cancer cases in the next 20
years. WHO expert Colin Mathers says
the shifting disease burden is the price
of success against big killers, such as
malaria and AIDS. “Because people are
living longer, they’re living to ages

where chronic diseases are an increasing problem,” he said. Some pharmaceutical firms are already making

make up for sluggish growth in markets
like the United States, Japan and
Europe. — Reuters

Peace talks hinge on US guidance
By Omar Karmi

W

ith pressure mounting on the Palestinians to
return to negotiations with Israel even without a
full settlement construction freeze in occupied
territory, the onus has very much shifted onto US diplomatic efforts to ensure that talks are renewed. Mahmoud Abbas,
the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, continues to resist the pressure, which is now coming from
Arab countries as well as Washington, insisting that Israel
must completely end construction work in settlements
before he will return to talks.
The longer the PLO holds out against the pressure, the
harder it will be for Abbas to back down from that pledge,
and the greater must be the incentive offered from
Washington. Palestinians consider settlement construction
a way for Israel to create facts on the ground that pre-empt
the outcome of negotiations. What is the point of negotiating while the land in question is disappearing even as talks
are held? Saeb Erekat, the PLO’s chief negotiator, asked.
In response, the United States has urged the sides to
consider the bigger picture, or “look at the forest”, in the
words of Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state.
Washington wants the sides first to discuss borders as a way
to resolve other issues. Borders, after all, cannot be agreed
upon without also implicitly agreeing on settlements and
Jerusalem.
However, in and of itself, asking the sides to discuss borders first will not mitigate for the lack of a full settlement
freeze. In parallel, the United States is understood to be
drafting letters of guarantees to both sides. It has been
reported the White House plans to offer the Palestinians
assurance that any state will be based on the 1967 borders
with only minor adjustments and the Israelis a promise that
some settlements will remain and be annexed to Israel.
To avoid any danger of contradiction in these guarantees,
the United States should sketch out a final position in terms

of percentages, said Gershon Baskin, head of the IsraelPalestine Center for Research and Information in
Jerusalem. “The problem with dealing with borders is you
can’t detach borders from the size of the territories. If the
Palestinians are given a guarantee that a Palestinian state
will be 22 percent of the land between the river and the sea,
then you can ask them to come to the table to negotiate borders first,” Baskin said, referring to the size of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 in relation to historic
Palestine.
That way, Baskin suggested, Palestinian concerns that
Israel would take more territory during negotiations
through settlement construction should be allayed, and the
sides could focus on where exactly borders should run,
knowing the amount of territory each state would be.
It is doubtful that Washington intends to be very explicit
in its assurances, however. Washington burnt its fingers
when it endorsed the Palestinian call for a full settlement
construction freeze only to back down and embrace the settlement “freeze” that Israel eventually came up with - one
that excludes settlement construction in East Jerusalem,
construction for buildings deemed essential for the public
good in settlements generally, as well as 3,000 housing
units already approved elsewhere in the West Bank.
Indeed, perhaps the most crucial question Palestinians
seek answered is to what extent Washington is willing to
exert any serious pressure on Israel. George Mitchell, the
US envoy to the region, recently hinted in an interview with
the US PBS network that Washington did not have to
extend loan guarantees to Israel as one means of pressure.
But Mitchell appeared to be speaking for himself and
immediately qualified his statement by saying that he still
thought the best way forwards was for Washington to convince the parties of what was in their self-interest.
NOTE: Omar Karmi is a foreign correspondent for The
National — CGNews

Saudi-Western interests in Yemen not identical
By Ulf Laessing

S

audi Arabia, Yemen’s
biggest donor, shares
Western worries about
resurgent Al-Qaeda activity in
its troubled neighbour, but pursues its own interests there,
fighting rebels, paying tribes
and funding Islamic institutions.
The United States and its
Western allies will hope to gain
more support from the kingdom
for stabilising Yemen at an
international meeting to be held
in London tomorrow. The trick
will be to make sure they are on
the same page. “Saudi Arabia is
the most important country for
Yemen,” said Gregory Johnsen,
a Yemen scholar at Princeton
University. “What the United
States and its European allies
really have to do is to make sure
Saudi Arabia does not undermine what the US is trying to
accomplish there,” he said.
The dangers of instability in
Yemen came into sharp focus
after Al-Qaeda’s wing there
claimed responsibility for a
failed bid to blow up a Detroitbound US passenger jet on Dec
25. The suspected Nigerian
attacker is reported to have
used the same explosive as a
Yemen-based suicide bomber
who tried to kill Saudi security
chief Prince Mohammed bin
Nayef in August. While
Washington and Riyadh may
share a common enemy in Al-

Yemenis have lunch in a street in Sanaa yesterday. – AFP
Qaeda, their approaches in
Yemen are not always identical.
The United States, for example, has called for a ceasefire in
Yemen’s long-running conflict
with Zaidi Shi’ite rebels in
northern mountains bordering
Saudi Arabia. The war intensified in August and has displaced
an estimated 200,000 civilians.
By contrast, Saudi Arabia
launched its forces against the
“Houthi” rebels in November in
their first military action beyond
the kingdom’s borders since the

1991 Gulf War with Iraq. The
Saudis say the border campaign,
relying heavily on air power and
artillery, has already cost them
113 dead.
Saudi Arabia bankrolls
President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s
government, but neither side
gives figures. Analysts say its
security aid to Sanaa far outstrips that of the United States
and may amount $200 million to
$300 million a year or more.
Riyadh’s dollars do not all pass
through government channels.

Saudi Arabia also funds certain
Yemeni tribes to try to improve
border security and extend its
own sway in a country it has
long seen as within its sphere of
influence.
Saudi money also goes to
mosques, religious schools and
charities in Yemen which
espouse the kingdom’s puritanical brand of Sunni Islam - and
which are resented by the
Houthis and many other opponents of Saleh, including southern separatists. “There are his-

torical problems,” said Yemeni
analyst Ali Seif Hassan. “Saudi
Arabia has often treated Yemen
as its backyard.” Saudi-Yemeni
relations have never been easy.
Parts of southern Saudi territory belonged to Yemen until
they were conquered by King
Abdul-Aziz bin Saud in a 1934
war. After republican officers
toppled Yemen’s Zaidi imamate
in 1962, Saudi Arabia intervened
in the ensuing civil war, backing
“royalist” tribes against their
Egyptian-backed opponents.
Saudi Arabia employed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni
workers once an oil boom began
in the 1970s, but expelled most
of them during the 1990-91 Gulf
crisis when Saleh failed to support a US-led campaign to drive
Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
Saudi-Yemeni ties improved
after a 1994 border pact, but
diplomats say the recent
absence of Crown Prince Sultan,
the kingdom’s veteran pointman
on Yemen, has complicated relations. Sultan, who returned
home in December after a year
abroad for medical treatment,
had nurtured personal ties with
Yemeni officials and tribal leaders. In his absence, other Saudi
princes, such as his son Prince
Khaled, the deputy defence minister, and security chief bin
Nayef, got involved in Yemen.
“Sultan was the dominant Saudi
player handling Yemen over
many years. Now there are sev-

eral persons involved. Saudis
and Yemenis have to adjust to
that,” said a diplomat in Riyadh.
The Yemeni president even
visited Sultan during his convalescence in Morocco in
September, showing the importance of the relationship, the
diplomat said. Yemenis and
some Western diplomats hope
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf
states will reopen their labour
markets to shrink the pool of
jobless young Yemenis - potential Al-Qaeda recruits.
But Gulf states themselves
are trying to lower dependence
on foreign labour and create jobs
for their own citizens. “I don’t
think the Saudis are very keen
to bring in many Yemenis, for
security reasons alone,” said a
diplomat in Riyadh. Lack of
skills was a bigger obstacle to
any new Saudi intake of Yemeni
workers, said Jamal Khashoggi,
editor-in-chief of the Saudi daily
Al-Watan. Saudi Arabia could
not solve Yemen’s problems
simply by injecting cash, he
said. Instead it should use its
influence to promote development and economic reform, and
fight corruption - goals also
viewed as priorities by Western
governments. “Financial aid is
not going guarantee our security. I think we should go
beyond that,” Khashoggi said.
“We should push for a better
performing Yemeni government.” — Reuters

ANALYSIS

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

15

For Haiti, opportunity to transform
By Michelle Faul

Y

es, the earth-shattering
quake was powerful
enough to bring many
countries to their knees. But
Haiti’s horrendous death toll and
cataclysmic damage must also
be blamed on a history of bad
policies pursued by its own weak
leadership and the foreign powers - governments and aid institutions - that have long held
sway here. This latest in a history of Haitian calamities may
offer an unmatched opportunity
to turn the tide in a country
where decades of food aid still
have left desperate mothers
feeding their children chalk to
stop hungry stomachs from rumbling.
Analysts offer revolutionary
solutions. Haitian political commentator Michel Soukar suggests creating farming communities styled on the Israeli kibbutz, taking advantage of the
flight of hundreds of thousands
from the capital. Prof. Simon
Fass of the University of Texas
says a mass migration abroad,
like Ireland’s great famine exodus of the 19th century, would
allow millions to escape a
degraded environment incapable
of supporting the ever-growing

Survivors line up for water in a makeshift tent camp at a football stadium
in the Santa Teresa area of Petionville, Haiti, Sunday. – AP
population.
All agree that key to lifting
Haiti from the virtual dark ages
is a strengthening of democratic
institutions, enabling Haitians to
help themselves. US President
Barack Obama has promised to
transform Haiti. That pledge,
according to Mark Schneider,
special adviser on Latin America
for the International Crisis
Group, would involve the United

States in “its largest-ever financial commitment to a single
post-disaster nation - ultimately
measured in the billions - and
extend over the next decade”.
Obama’s top adviser on the
calamity, former President Bill
Clinton, said: “Everybody that
has seriously followed Haiti for a
long time believes Haiti has the
best chance in our lifetime to
break the chains of its past, to

build a true and modern state.”
Past US involvement in
Haiti’s government has largely
failed, however. Washington
installed a military government
that ruled from 1915 to 1934,
and supported the corrupt and
murderous Duvalier family dictatorship that endured from
1956 to 1986, turning a blind eye
because it was a bulwark against
the communism that nearby

Cuba embraced. Clinton sent
troops to oust Haiti’s military
dictators in 1994 and restore
democratically elected President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The former priest and selfappointed savior of Haiti’s poor
then accused Clinton’s administration of mounting its own coup
against him, when he was forced
in 2004 to leave the country,
which had become a major drugshipment point under his watch.
While Haitians seem to welcome
the post-quake influx of US military, some worry what it portends. “It’s true we need a
Marshall Plan for Haiti,” Soukar
said. “But to do what?” He
accused Haiti’s elite - a mainly
lighter-skinned minority - of
having no interest in building a
competent Haitian state. “These
are the people who even now are
in the throes of organizing to
enrich themselves from the disaster,” Soukar said, “to get their
hands on that $100 million”
Obama has promised.
Richard Morse, a HaitianAmerican hotelier, musician and
commentator, said Washington
and its allies in Haiti’s elite have
clashing interests. “Washington
wants democracy. It wants a free
market. It wants stability. But
those are diametrically opposed

to the interests of its allies, who
control 90 percent of the money,
who get rich off monopolies and
who want to control the 80 percent of the population that it
keeps illiterate to provide a pool
of cheap labor.” Soukar said the
United States must ensure its
aid goes to productive groups,
such as farmers, and not to the
importers of foreign foods that
have helped decimate agricultural production. Haiti was self-sufficient in its staple, rice, until
imports of cheap American rice
forced farmers to migrate to the
cities. Led by the US Agency for
International Development, foreign governments have created
their own operations or channeled international aid through
nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) to avoid corrupt Haitian
administrations. And more than
10,000 of those NGOs have been
operating in Haiti since at least
the 1970s, with little result, said
the University of Virginia’s
Robert Fatton Jr., author of a
book on Haiti’s unending transition to democracy. “Instead of
pumping its resources into
NGOs, the international community must shift its priorities and
concentrate on helping Haitians
build durable state institutions,”
Fatton said.— AP

Paring back US healthcare not so easy
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar

T

rimming back the 2,000-page, trillion-dollar Democratic health care
bills to the parts that average
Americans understand and like may not
be as simple as it sounds. A complete ban
on insurance companies denying coverage to people with medical problems
would be out of the question. Forget
about guaranteed health insurance for all
Americans - it costs too much. Still,
Congress might be able to produce legislation that takes some rough edges off
today’s coverage problems and makes
progress in controlling costs.
That is if Democrats and Republicans
can call a truce. Republicans, who for
months have been urging “commonsense” alternatives to the Democrats’
sweeping overhaul plan, may still be
unwilling to help pass anything that lets
President Barack Obama claim an election-year victory. They will have 41 votes
in the Senate to block it once
Massachusetts’ Scott Brown is seated.
Yet the US healthcare system is unlikely
to heal itself. The number of uninsured
will rise above 50 million unless government steps in, while ballooning costs
could leave Americans turning 65 with a
bare-bones government healthcare program for the elderly.
“The problems that exist in our
healthcare system are real problems,”
said Sen Jeff Bingaman, a moderate
Democrat who has worked to find compromise with Republicans. “It would be
unfortunate if we were to just set aside
significant healthcare reforms.” Obama
has suggested shifting the focus to popular proposals like banning denial of coverage to those with medical problems. That
particular fix is unlikely because it would
encourage people to put off getting insurance until they are sick, driving up premiums for everybody else. “In healthcare,
everything fits together,” said Sen Jay
Rockefeller, a Democrat, “It’s very hard
to say we can cut this out and do that.”
Banning pre-existing medical condition
denials would have to go hand-in-hand
with coverage for all. Still, some limitations on health insurance companies are
feasible, said Mark McClellan, who

served as a healthcare official for
President George W Bush. “There is a
starting point,” McClellan said. “There is
a way to do something meaningful without going to requirements for coverage
and trillion-dollar subsidies.” On
McClellan’s short list would be a ban on
denial of coverage to children with medical problems, forbidding insurers from
canceling the policies of people who get
sick, and limiting in some way what the
companies may spend on overhead and
profits instead of direct medical care.
Other possible insurance fixes include
eliminating lifetime dollar limits on coverage and allowing children to stay on their
parents’ coverage into their late 20s.
Such changes could be combined with
federal funding for high-risk insurance
pools to provide affordable coverage for
people in poor health shut out of the private market. Obama supports risk pools,
as does Sen. John McCain, the 2008
Republican presidential candidate.
Notably, individual components of the
Democratic megabills are far more popular than the whole, according to a poll
released Friday by the nonpartisan Kaiser
Family Foundation. Seventy-three percent of Americans support small business
tax credits, and 62 percent back a
Medicaid expansion. Allowing dependent
children to stay on their parents’ coverage
until age 25 got 60 percent support. Such
steps could help many who now lack coverage, but that would leave holes in the
safety net. On cost-control, incremental
improvements also are possible.
There is broad agreement that the
way government’s elderly healthcare plan
currently pays hospitals and doctors
rewards high-volume, low-quality care.
Shifting these payments to make
providers more accountable for whether
the patient ultimately gets better could
have a positive impact throughout the
healthcare system. The Democratic bills
would launch a series of experiments
aimed at getting good quality care at lower
cost, and those could be incorporated into
a scaled-back bill.
Alternatives to medical malpractice litigation also could yield savings. The
Congressional Budget Office, reversing a
previous analysis, says curbs on jury

awards in malpractice cases could save
the government $54 billion over 10 years
by reducing defensive medicine. It is too
early to tell whether Democrats will
embrace the smaller-is-better route,
much less get it through Congress in the
current political climate.

“The well has been poisoned,” said
Robert Laszewski, a health industry consultant. “The Republican base is not going
to let any Republican senator take
Democrats off the meat hook they are on
now.” Still, for Democrats, there is a
hopeful precedent. After the Clinton-era

health overhaul imploded in 1994,
Democratic and Republican lawmakers
coalesced around the idea of a new health
insurance program for the children of lowincome working parents. That program,
still thriving, now covers about 6 million
kids. — AP

Economy handcuffs Obama
By Stephen Collinson

B

arack Obama promised hope amid a “winter of
American hardship” when he took office, but one
year on, multiple crises endure, and his ambitious
presidency is handcuffed by a ruined economy. Massive
expectations greeted Obama’s epochal inauguration as
America’s first black president on Jan 20, 2009, but it did
not take long for optimism to fade as change proved hard to
effect in such challenging times.
Obama has had major successes: he seems likely to pass
healthcare reform where generations of presidents failed,
he embraced multilateral diplomacy and won a Nobel prize
and is on course to get combat troops out of Iraq this year.
But often, Obama’s most important achievements lay in
what did not happen, there was no second Great
Depression and the banking industry did not collapse - significant achievements but difficult to spin as political victories. Early on, memories of his unpopular predecessor
George W Bush were fresh, and Obama escaped blame for
economic turmoil: but now the buck stops with him. Polls
show Obama’s public approval ratings tipping below 50 percent, a watershed which complicates moving the president’s agenda. Multiple surveys have public satisfaction at
Obama’s economic management, amid 10 percent unemployment, at only around 40 percent - a rotten political hand
ahead of mid-term congressional elections in November.
The White House, with Democratic control of Congress
in peril, argues times might be tough, but relief is ahead.
Republicans counter though that Obama’s policies are
wrong and he is a “job-killing president”. “I am absolutely
confident we’re going to be able to look back at the end of
this year and say that things are getting better; that we’ve
reignited confidence in our economy, in America,” Obama
said Thursday.
His top political strategist David Axelrod admitted that
the economy was clouding the administration’s promise.
“You don’t have to be a political genius to know that in that
environment it’s very hard to maintain very high poll numbers,” Axelrod said. “And so, we’re the governing party. We
didn’t create the mess that we’re in, but we’re the responsible party now, and so that brings some heat down on us.”

No one thought Obama’s stratospheric early polls numbers would endure, but his descent has been swift. “He had
nowhere to go but down,” said Tom Baldino, a professor of
politics at Wilkes University, Pennsylvania. “He inherited
an unbelievable amount of problems, some of which he
could not solve in six months or a year.” Dante Scala, who
teaches politics and the presidency at the University of
New Hampshire added: “coming down to earth was
inevitable given the bad economy.”
Logic suggests that Obama’s political position will only
recover along with jobs and prosperity. “There has to be a
turn there. The mid-term elections coming up will not be
good for the president (but) he can salvage some of that if
the economy turns,” Baldino said. Few sweeping remedies
are available to fight unemployment, the budget deficit is
above a trillion dollars and there is no appetite for a repeat
of Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill.
So, small job creation programs aside, Obama can do little more than tell voters he understands their plight. “This
is a tough time for this country... pain and anxiety and
sometimes anger felt by our friends and our constituents
and our fellow Americans,” Obama said Thursday. Obama
faces a similar challenge to Ronald Reagan, who saw tough
economic times take his approval rating to below 40 percent by mid 1982. But Reagan’s popularity rebounded along
with the economy and he won reelection by a landslide in
1984.
“If the economy improves and we do not get stuck in a
quagmire in Afghanistan, public sentiment is likely to catch
up with the former and lead to his reelection in 2012,” said
Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institution. Axelrod agreed:
“I think if the economy improves, as I believe it will over the
course of a year, that’s going to redound to our benefit.”
Obama’s fate does not hinge on the economy alone. A thicket of domestic and foreign policy challenges remain - with
revived fears of Al-Qaeda airborne terror and Haiti’s earthquake disaster added to a crowded plate. His measure as
commander-in-chief will be also judged on his 30,000-strong
troop surge to Afghanistan where US casualties will likely
rise this year. Obama must also confront a decision on
tougher nuclear sanctions on Iran and will not meet his oneyear deadline to close Guantanamo Bay. — AFP

Iraq’s prime minister vs Saddam past
By Brian Murphy

T

o hear Iraq’s prime minister tell
it: the country’s future depends
on purging its past links with
Saddam Hussein’s regime. And Nouri
Al-Maliki is saying it every chance he
gets. He has become something of a
one-man tribunal passing judgment on
the reach of suspected loyalists to
Saddam’s now-outlawed Baath party.
Al-Maliki’s pronouncements - whether
in parliament after deadly bombings in
Baghdad in December or in talks
Saturday with visiting Vice President
Joe Biden - all dwell on one theme: that
Shiite-led Iraq can never be secure
until it has weeded out all remnants of
Saddam’s Sunni-dominated power base.
But Al-Maliki’s preoccupation with
hunting Baathists comes with potential
pitfalls. On a pure political level, it risks
alienating Sunnis at a pivotal time for
his government. These Sunni votes
may be needed by Al-Maliki’s bloc in
March 7 parliamentary elections to
fend off challenges from rival Shiites
who want to unseat him. In the more
cluttered realm of public image, AlMaliki looks increasingly rigid just
when key ally Washington is looking
for some political finesse. He appears
unwilling to temper - even slightly - his
drive to name and shame perceived
Saddam-era throwbacks. Sunni leaders
object more to the method than the
message. They say the steamroll
approach cannot distinguish between

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki speaks to high-level
Iraqi government and military leaders during a meeting in
Baghdad Sunday. – AP
those who were key Saddam apparatchiks and others who expressed
support for the Baath party to secure
jobs, study in universities or simply get
exit visas for international travel.
Iraq’s Sunni Arabs enjoyed a privileged position under Saddam. The USled invasion in 2003 opened the door
for the majority Shiites to take the
upper hand. “Al-Maliki sees Baathists
everywhere,” said David Schenker,
who follows Iraqi affairs at the

Washington Institute for Near East
Policy. “This kind of policy, however,
fails to take into account the depths of
Baathism. It was far-reaching. It didn’t
just have its hard-core ideological followers, but also other Iraqis who were
supporters just to get on.”
To be sure, Al-Maliki’s worries
have some real grounding. The US military and others believe elements of
Saddam’s former regime became part
of the wider Sunni-led insurgency. Al-

Maliki has gone a step farther: directly
accusing Saddam loyalists for carrying
out three huge bombings in Baghdad
since August and denouncing neighboring Syria for allegedly harboring them.
In December - days after a series of
blasts killed 127 people - Al-Maliki
came before angry parliament members and repeated his fist-pounding
against the Baath party threat. It was
widely interpreted as an attempt to
divert attention from serious security
lapses around government buildings the main targets of Baghdad bombing in
recent months.
The latest run at suspected Saddamera sympathizers has put Al-Maliki
under even more heat. Al-Maliki has
strongly backed a vetting process that
has blacklisted at least 512 candidates
from March elections because of suspected Baath Party ties. The roster
includes Shiites as well as Sunnis. But
some Sunni leaders see it as political
tool to knock out candidates without
any clear evidence and raise suspicions
before voting. Such rancor runs
straight to the White House. American
officials worry about anything that
could raise questions about the fairness
of the election, which is seen as an
important step in Iraq’s political reconciliation and a boost toward accelerating US troops withdrawals. Biden came
to Baghdad to drive home that point.
Yet Al-Maliki was not swayed during talks Saturday. He repeated the
need to exclude Saddam’s followers

from any important roles in Iraq - a policy known as Debaathification that was
launched in 2003 by America’s postinvasion overseers. In an Iraqi-style
inquisition, Al-Maliki also is demanding
formal repudiations of those accused of
Baath party ties.
In a speech to Interior Ministry
workers on Sunday, Al-Maliki openly
taunted the remnants of Saddam’s
backers. “We challenge them to try a
coup or change the path of the political
process,” he said. “They cannot.” On
Friday, Al-Maliki used the metaphor of
traditional Quranic justice to describe
his drive to keep any pro-Saddam sentiments from Iraq’s political and security institutions. “Their hands should be
cut off,” he told a group of Shiite clan
leaders.
Al-Maliki’s past may highlight his
unbending views. He was a member of
a Shiite militant group against Saddam
and fled Iraq in 1979 after learning of
plans to have him killed. He spent most
of his exile in Iran - including much of
the 1980-88 war with Iraq - and was
part of a Shiite network seeking to topple Saddam’s Baath party fortress.
“The interests of the country lie in
excluding those are glorifying the former regime and tie themselves with its
ugly past,” said Al-Maliki on state-run
Iraqiyya TV on Friday.
Many other places - such as postapartheid South Africa to post-Iron
Curtain Europe - have struggled with
how to put to rest their pasts. — AP

focus

Britain pins hope of
Afghan exit on surge
By Anna Tomforde

A

s the Afghan mission
enters a new phase with
the US troop surge,
Britain hopes that improved
coordination of human and material resources will advance the
aims of the international coalition
and slow down the relentless rise
in British casualties. The combination of more boots on the
ground, better weapons and
equipment and accelerated training of the Afghan National Army
(ANA) and the police will give
fresh momentum to the war
effort, defence analysts in
London believe.
It would, therefore, be the
dual goal of this week’s international conference on Afghanistan
in London to discuss the implementation of military strategy
“and what it means to individual
countries” and to increase pressure on the Afghan government
to give firm commitments on the
training of security forces. “The
key is the professionalization of
the Afghan army and the police,”
Olivier Grouille, defence analyst
at the Royal United Services
Institute, told the German Press
Agency dpa.
It was essential that Afghan
President Hamid Karzai, who
will be co-hosting the conference
with British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown, understood that
the commitments given by his
government “must match the
contributions” made by members of the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF), said
Grouille.
If the Afghan training scheme
proceeded as planned, and
Afghan forces could be sent in
large numbers to “support”
British troops in the volatile
south of the country, public pressure on the British government
for an “exit strategy” was likely
to ease, he said. “I think the government has got the message
across that we will not be there
forever - but that we will not
walk away and be defeated
either,” said Grouille.
NATO’s aim is to raise the
strength of the Afghan army from
the current around 100,000 to
171,000 and the police force from

89,000 to 134,000 by October
2011, but officials and military
leaders admit that drugs, illiteracy and corruption remain a problem. “Recruitment rates are
good, but retention rates are
not,” said Grouille, referring to
the large number of Afghan
police and army personnel who
abandon their jobs, especially in
the more dangerous south of the
country.
However, with larger numbers being recruited, the level of
“quality and rotation” would
automatically increase, he said.
Government officials in London
have said that the Afghanistan
conference will focus on the
issues of security, improved governance and the transfer of
authority in specific regions.
Participants would also be interested to hear about Afghanistan’s
plans to reintegrate former “nonideological” Taleban fighters
before and funds to promote reconciliation would be released, a
government official said.
However, the London meeting and its results would be
reviewed at a follow-up conference in Kabul in March or April,
which would put “flesh on the
bones” of the London discussions. British officials also
stressed that the framework of
the London conference was
“political” and that no major aid
pledges or decisions on troop
contributions would be made.
“This is not about individual
countries coming forward with
pledges of more troops,” said a
Foreign Office official.
In the wake of the US decision to increase troop levels by a
further 30,000, matched by
pledges from NATO partners to
supply an additional 7,000 British
military leaders have freely
admitted that they had previously faced an impossible task in
Afghanistan, and especially in the
southern Helmand province.
Around 250 British lives have
been lost in Afghanistan since
the conflict began in 2001. But
2009 has been the “bloodiest
year” for Britain so far, with
more than a 100 casualties, of
whom the vast majority were
killed by improvised roadside
bombs. — dpa

Allies expect more
of German mission
By Jeff Black

E

veryone is expecting that
Germany do more in the
war in Afghanistan. With
up to 4,500 troops - mostly in the
north of the country - Germany
has the third-largest contingent
in the NATO-led International
Security Assistance Force
(ISAF). But that hasn’t stopped
it being accused of punching
below its weight. American criticism has centred on Germany’s
perceived reluctance to engage
in combat, and the slow pace of
German-led training of Afghan
police and security forces.
And some Afghan officials
have recently bemoaned what
they see as German reticence
when it comes to the hard fighting. The governor of Kunduz,
where the German-led ISAF
Regional Command North is
based, said in December that if
the Germans didn’t want to fight
the Taliban, they ought to leave.
NATO itself is clearly hoping for
more boots on the ground from
Berlin, in order to make up the
quota of around 7,000 troops
called for by Secretary General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen in
response to US President
Barack Obama’s 30,000-strong
boost.
The German military, or
Bundeswehr, also seems to
believe more men and resources
will be necessary. On January 22
the Defence Ministry in Berlin
leaked its intention to offer up to
1,500 more men. The problem is
the German public, who for obvious reasons since the Second
World War have been wary of
military action abroad. Incensed
over a September bombing raid
ordered by a German commander which killed up to 142 people, many of them civilians, public opinion is clearly against
sending more troops.
According to a December
opinion poll, only a third of the
population support an increase in
the troop-level in the Hindu
Kush. Discontent with the
Afghan deployment is also more
generally about the disconnect
between the current reality on
the ground and the original, official, justifications in 2001: That
the army was there to provide

security for humanitarian reconstruction, not to fight militants.
In doing so, according to ministers at the time, it was acting in
Germany’s own defence.
But with the deterioration of
security in the German zone in
Afghanistan - the Taliban have
taken the fight to the
Bundeswehr’s door - leading
observers think a total change of
thinking is required if Berlin is to
fulfill its obligations in the face of
such public scepticism.
“We cannot go on as if
German soldiers in Afghanistan
were just souped-up development workers,” Thomas Risse
of the Otto Suhr Institute in
Berlin said. Other voices are
arguing for a major adjustment to
how the German government
treats the war in Afghanistan are
growing. “A new, fundamental,
political, evaluation of the intervention in Afghanistan is long
overdue,”
wrote
Dieter
Deiseroth, an outspoken judge in
Federal Administrative Court in
a recent journal.
So what might spur German
support for finishing the job in
Afghanistan? One indication is
that the government is currently
deciding how it should legally
define the conflict. Currently,
Afghanistan is not technically
described as a “conflict”, and soldiers in Kunduz are subject to
criminal law as applied at home.
This has led to discontent within
the ranks of the army, and public
unease that they are not being
told about what is really happening.
Senior
members
of
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative coalition have indicated the government may shortly
“re- define” its mission, as being
part of a “non-international
armed conflict.” This would
mean that the normal laws of war
would then apply.
More
important,
says
Thomas Risse, is that the government goes on “an education
offensive” with the public to
explain what must be done in
Afghanistan. “The federal government has until now been very
reticent with the public, which
for the most part is critical of the
Afghanistan engagement,” he
says. — dpa

SPORTS

16

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Schumacher returns back to Formula One limelight
STUTTGART: Michael Schumacher sauntered back into the Formula One limelight
in Mercedes overalls yesterday to kick off
his bid for a record eighth title at the ripe
old age of 41.
Returning to centre stage three years
after he retired, the former Ferrari driver
looked trim and relaxed as he appeared
alongside fellow-German Nico Rosberg at
a presentation of the Mercedes GP team.
“It’s a great emotion and a great feeling
I am getting,” said Schumacher, the sport’s
most successful driver, in his first public
appearance for his new team since
announcing his comeback last month.
“Finally the 2010 Formula One season
is firing up. “I have to say that I am totally

committed to this new challenge. This season feels like a re-start for me and I am so
motivated.”
The car presented to the media at a livery launch was the 2009 Brawn GP that
took Britain’s Jenson Button to the title,
repainted in the evocative ‘Silver Arrows’
colours of the team’s new owners.
The Mercedes museum was a fitting
backdrop for a Mercedes-powered car,
albeit largely designed by Honda, that
carved its place in Formula One history by
winning Brawn the constructors’ crown at
the first attempt.
The new Mercedes MGP W01, the first
“Silver Arrow” since Mercedes last competed as a works team in 1955, will make

its debut when testing starts at Spain’s
Valencia circuit on Feb. 1.
“I cannot wait to get into the car for the
first time in Valencia,” said Schumacher,
who was shown in a video before the
launch stepping out of a red Mercedes SLR
sportscar in a cheeky nod to his Ferrari
past, in a team statement.
“I am convinced that Mercedes GP will
be in a very good position to fight for the
championships this season and I will definitely give it a go,” added the German, who
raced for Mercedes’ sportscar team before
entering Formula One in 1991.
“Driving for Mercedes-Benz again is
like the closing of a circle for me as I started my racing driver career with the three-

pointed star on my helmet. This is another
reason why I cannot wait for the competition to get underway.”
Button has moved to Mercedes-powered McLaren, whose team principal
Martin Whitmarsh was invited to the
launch, since the end of last season alongside 2008 world champion and compatriot
Lewis Hamilton.
The season ahead will have a Germany
v Britain sub-plot, with Mercedes fielding
an entirely German line-up against
McLaren’s all-English selection.
Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn,
the former Ferrari technical director who
led a management buyout after Honda quit
at the end of 2008, savoured the moment.

“Working with Michael again is a very
special treat...I didn’t imagine it would happen again,” he told the 600-strong audience.
Meanwhile, Nico Rosberg has been
assured he will get equal treatment with
Michael Schumacher at Mercedes this season despite the gulf between them in
achievement and experience.
“We don’t have a number one driver
and we don’t intend to have a number one
driver,” team principal Ross Brawn told
reporters at a presentation of the team
who won both titles last year as champions
Brawn GP.
Rosberg, son of 1982 world champion
Keke, joins from Williams with a second

place his best result in four seasons. The
24-year-old German, who had expected to
partner world champion Jenson Button
until the Briton left for McLaren, admitted
to some concern when he heard
Schumacher would be his team mate.
“There was this little bit of doubt within me, especially because Michael has a
very good relationship with Ross and all
that,” he said.
“Recently I’ve had a lot of discussions
with Ross and (Mercedes motorsport
vice-president) Norbert (Haug) and I am
very confident and comfortable that we
will both have the same opportunities,
same car, same everything. So that’s fantastic.”—Reuters

RALEIGH: Eric Staal No.12 of the Carolina Hurricanes skates against the Bruins. —AFP

Hurricanes blow away Bruins
RALEIGH: Carolina goalkeeper Cam Ward
broke the franchise victory record, and Jussi
Jokinen had a goal and two assists in the
Hurricanes’ 5-1 victory over the Boston
Bruins in the NHL on Sunday.
Ward made 27 saves for his 131st victory
to move one ahead of Arturs Irbe atop the
Hartford/Carolina victory list. The

Hurricanes snapped a six-game regular-season losing streak against Boston, and moved
out the NHL’s cellar — a point ahead of
Edmonton.
Ray Whitney and Brandon Sutter each
had a goal and an assist, Eric Staal and Chad
LaRose also scored and Joni Pitkanen had
two assists for the Hurricanes. They scored

three goals in 6:36 span and led 5-0 in the
opening minute of the third period. David
Krejci scored for Boston. The Bruins have
lost five straight.

Penguins 2, Flyers 1
At Philadelphia, Matt Cooke scored on a
power play with 1:47 left to give Pittsburgh

a victory over Philadelphia. Cooke deflected Gonchar’s slap shot between goalie Ray
Emery’s legs.
Sergei Gonchar also had a power-play
goal for the Penguins. Brent Johnson made
27 saves, allowing only Jeff Carter’s powerplay goal early in the first period.

Timmer fails to qualify
for Vancouver Olympics
HEERENVEEN:
Olympic
champion Marianne Timmer
failed to qualify for the
Vancouver Games yesterday
and won’t get a chance to
defend her 1,000-meter title
next month.
In a three-way skate-off just
about two months after she
smashed her left heel in a highspeed fall, the 35-year-old
Dutchwoman could only manage third place in 1 minute,
19.92 seconds.
Olympic 3,000 champion
Ireen Wust won in 1:18.29, but
it was Timmer who got a standing ovation from the crowd at
Thialf Ice Stadium.
“I just ran out of time and
that is bitter,” said Timmer,
who has competed in three
Olympics and has won three
gold medals. “Give me two
more weeks and I know it would
be a different contest.”
Timmer was in strong form
and already looking forward to
her fourth Olympics as she
went into a World Cup meet in
November at Thialf. But her
heel — and along with it her
season — shattered as she
rounded a bend in the 500meter race and saw Chinese
skater Jing Yu fall in front of
her.
Timmer’s skate clipped Jing
and she slammed feet-first into
inflatable barriers lining the oval
before screaming in pain.
“It can happen to any
skater,” Timmer said. After the
accident, “you set a new course
to reach your goal because it is
etched into your head and your

heart.”
Timmer struggled and
trained to rebuild her fitness
and race rhythm even when her
foot was in a cast, never allowing the dream of a fourth
Olympics to die. “In the last
five weeks I’ve had to go from
learning to walk again to delivering a top performance on the
ice,” she said.
But yesterday, Timmer
finally had to face reality. “It’s
painful — in both senses of the
word,” Timmer said. In the end,
Timmer wasn’t even close in
the 1,000 — longtrack speedskating’s second shortest event
after the 500.
“There was only a 1 percent
chance I could even start,”
Timmer said. “And then I end a
second
behind
Natasja
(Bruinsma) and a second and a
half behind Ireen.” Timmer was
one of the brightest stars of the
1998 Nagano Games, where she
won both the 1,000 and 1,500.
She was disappointing in Salt
Lake City four years later as her
focus was diverted away from
training by a mixture of relationship and business problems.
But Timmer returned to the
top in Turin, where she again
won the 1,000, partly by channeling the anger and disappointment at being disqualified for a
false start in the 500 earlier in
the games.
She believes she could have
made it to Vancouver with more
time to prepare. “If we’d been
able to skate in two or three
weeks, I’d have been in much
better shape,” she said.—AP

Avalanche 4, Stars 0
At Denver, Craig Anderson made 27
saves for his firth shutout of the season, and
Paul Stastny and Chris Stewart each had a
goal and an assist to help Colorado win its
season-high sixth straight game.
Brett Clark and T.J. Galiardi added goals

for Colorado (30-15-6). The Avalanche have
won six in a row for the first time since Feb.
26-March 8, 2008 to move two points ahead
of idle Vancouver atop the Northwest
Division. Anderson has won all six games in
the streak and has allowed only two goals in
the last four games. He has 12 career
shutouts.—AP

British target skeleton,
curling gold at Games

PARK CITY: Hannah Teter looks on as she finished second in the US
Snowboarding Grand Prix. Teter was named to the USA Snowboard Halfpipe
Team for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. —AFP

PARIS: Britain is aiming to
better their previous best
Winter Olympics medal haul
dating back 74 years, although
a sudden cash crisis has cast a
cloud over the build-up to the
February 12-28 Games.
Back in 1936 in the
German resort of GarmischPartenkirchen, Britain won
one gold (ice-hockey), one silver (figure skater Cecilia
Colledge) and one bronze
(men’s 4-man bobsleigh).
But the British Olympic
Association is confident of bettering that after seeing its
winter athletes claim world
gold medals in 2009 in the
women’s two-man bobsleigh
team and men’s curling, while
the skeleton squad added two
silvers.
“It is encouraging to see
the potential that exists within
British winter sport,” BOA
chief executive Andy Hunt
said. “In Turin four years ago,
Team GB won one medal,
Shelley Rudman’s excellent
silver in the skeleton. We
hope to improve on that performance in Canada,” he said.
The British team that will
travel to Vancouver will comprise around 50 athletes
across 11 disciplines (biathlon,
bobsleigh, skeleton, curling,
luge, figure skating, short
track speed skating, alpine
skiing, cross country skiing,

freestyle skiing, and snowboard).
However,
Vancouver
hopes suffered a scare last
week when it was reported
that the British Ski and
Snowboard Federation needed
a 200,000-pound (324,120 dollars) cash injection to keep
operating.
Federation chairman Oliver
Jones told The Times that the
global economic crisis had hit
his
organisation
hard.
“Administration is only one of
a number of outcomes which
may come out of this,” he said.
“The federation has had a
particularly difficult year,
made worse by the economic
background.” Against the
backdrop of economic gloom,
Britain’s top-of-the-podium
hopes will again lie with
Rudman in the women’s
skeleton.
Rudman ousted top-ranked
Mellisa Hollingworth in the
World Cup race at St Moritz
last week to show her form
with fellow Briton Amy
Williams fourth.
The men’s curling team
will enter the Olympic competition in Vancouver as reigning
world champions after defeating host nation Canada in the
final in April 2009.
Men’s skip David Murdoch
said he could not wait for the
Games to begin. “It’s the pin-

nacle of our sport, the competition that everybody wants to
be involved in,” he said.
“The Games in Turin
ended in such a frustrating
way, when we missed out on a
medal by the narrowest of
margins, and I’m very keen to
have another opportunity to
compete for an Olympic medal
with Team GB.
“We go as world champions, but we know the competition will be very tough, particularly from the host nation.
Curling is hugely popular in
Canada, so we know there will
be a lot of interest in our
event.”
Jon Eley is also a medal
hopeful in speed skating, having finished fifth in Turin four
years ago. The men’s relay
team are also considered
strong contenders for a podium finish.
Hopes in alpine skiing rest
squarely on the shoulders of
Chemmy Alcott, who in 2006
finished 11th in the women’s
downhill, 19th in the super-G
and 22 in the giant slalom. But
it is difficult to see either
Alcott or the men’s ski team
break the dominance of traditional Alpine countries on the
piste.—AFP

Raptors win over Lakers
TORONTO: Hedo Turkoglu made two free
throws with 1.2 seconds left as the Toronto
Raptors beat the Los Angeles Lakers 106-105 on
Sunday.
Andrea Bargnani scored 22 points, Chris Bosh
and Jarrett Jack each had 18 and Marco Belinelli
added 15 for the Raptors, who are 6-0 at home this
season against Western Conference opponents.
Kobe Bryant missed a last-second jump shot
and fell one assist shy of his first triple-double of
the season, scoring 27 points and grabbing 16
rebounds. Bryant, who shot 11 for 24, has 16
career triple-doubles. Pau Gasol scored 22 points,
Andrew Bynum had 21 and Jordan Farmar 17 for
the Lakers.
Mavericks 128, Knicks 78
At New York, Drew Gooden stepped into the
lineup with 15 points and 18 rebounds as Dallas
coasted to the biggest win in franchise history
while missing two starters.

Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry each scored 20
points, and the Mavericks, who led by as much as
53, put on a shooting clinic in beating the Knicks
for the eighth straight time. Dallas shot 58 percent from the field, was 12 of 22 from beyond the
arc and 16 of 17 from the foul line. David Lee had
11 points and 14 rebounds as the Knicks lost their
sixth in eight games.
Clippers 92, Wizards 78
At Washington, Chris Kaman scored 20 points,
and Marcus Camby had 12 points and 19 rebounds
as Los Angeles snapped an eight-game road skid
to surpass last season’s win total.
Baron Davis had 11 points and 11 assists, and
Rasual Butler scored 14 points for the Clippers
(20-23), who won despite a 3-of-16 performance
from 3-point range. Antawn Jamison had 20
points and 10 rebounds, and Brendan Haywood
added 18 points and 12 rebounds for the Wizards,
who have lost three straight. —AP

Kuwait to host first Arabian Horse
National Championship show
KUWAIT: “Bait Al Arab
Kuwait
State
Stud”
announced the closing of its
registration on Jan 17, for
the first National Arabian
Horse Championship Show
which will take place on
February 17,18th and 19th.
“Bait Al Arab” announced
in an official press release
that more than 200 horses
have been registered to participate in the first championship organized by “Bait Al
Arab” which aims to select
the best of each participating
category of junior and senior
female horse and junior
males and stallions.
Mohammed Jassim Al
Marzouq, chairman of the
organizing committee confirmed that “Bait Al Arab’ is
organizing the championship
for the first time under the
umbrella of the European
Conference of Arab Horse
Organization, ECAHO, the
entity concerned with organizing Arabian horse beauty
shows all around Europe and
the Near and Middle East.
Al Marzouk also clarified
that holding such an event
arises from our responsibility to sustain equestrian
activities and raising the
interest in breeding Arabian
horses on the one hand and
promoting such a hobby for
the youth, creating standard
competency in this industry.
Al Marzouq added: “We
have devoted all our expertise and capabilities to organize a championship that
meets our ambitious stan-

Mohammed Jassim
Al Marzouq
dards taking into consideration that it is the first official
championship organized in
the state of Kuwait.
Al Marzouq acknowledged with gratitude the
sponsorship of this championship by His Highness
Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al
Jaber Al Sabah, the Amir of
Kuwait, and praised the
needed support offered by
the Hunting & Equestrian
Club as well as the sponsors
which will highly contribute
to the success of this championship where its activities
results will be announced in
a later stage.
Noting that “Bait Al
Arab” had organized the 4th
Arab Horse Auction last
December, where 19 horses
of different age groups
where sold. These horses
represented a group of the
important Arabian horses
which were bred and

brought up at “Bait Al
Arab”.
In addition, “Bait Al
Arab” always strives to organize such competitions and
activities that satisfy horse
lovers and those interested
in Kuwait and the region.
Bait Al Arab also organizes
photography competitions
for original Arabian horses
and runs seminars to
inform, educate and train
breeders, riders and owners
and publishes “The Arabian
Horse Letter” quarterly in
Arabic and in English to
keep Arabian horses lovers
all around the world updated
about all activities related to
the Arabian horse in Kuwait.
And on their behalf, the
participants have expressed
their gratitude and happiness with the preparations
set by “Bait Al Arab’ to produce a successful event.
Ensuring that such championships brings together the
breeders and owners of
Arabian horses and those
interested all under one roof
to compete among each
other and bring out their
best of skills and capabilities.
In addition, they thanked
“Bait Al Arab Kuwait State
Stud”, for the continuous
support and interest in organizing competitions and
championships related to
Arabian horses in Kuwait, on
all different levels and categories, under the supervision of international organizations involved in this sector like ECAHO.

LA QUINTA: Bubba Watson
double-bogeyed the final hole
of the fourth round at the Bob
Hope Classic, dropping him
back into a tie with PGA Tour
rookie Alex Prugh at 23-under
265 on Sunday heading into
the finale in the five-round
event.
Watson finished with 3under 69 to match Prugh (70) at
23-under 265. Bill Haas and Tim
Clark were a stroke back after
66s, Joe Ogilvie (68) followed at
21 under, and Mike Weir (67)
was in a group at 20 under.
Watson was in position to
take a solid lead into his chase
for his first PGA Tour victory
yesterday in the event that
was pushed back a day after
rain
washed
out
play
Thursday.
Instead, Watson dropped
back with his disappointing
finish on the Nicklaus Private
course, allowing Prugh to
sneak back atop the board.
Watson, Prugh, Haas and
Clark have never won on the
PGA Tour, but all have a golden opportunity in a famed
event featuring none of the
tour’s top 35 players this year.
Haas’ father, Jay, won the
Hope Classic in 1988.
Watson was in position to
take a solid lead into his chase
for his first PGA Tour victory
Monday in the event that was
pushed back a day after rain
washed out play Thursday in
the four-course event.
Instead, he dropped back
with his disappointing finish
on the Nicklaus Private
course, allowing Prugh to
sneak back atop the board.
“Tomorrow is going to be a
tough day no matter if I had
the lead, was tied for the lead,
or one back, or five back,”
Watson said.
“Tomorrow is going to be a
fun day. This is what we live
for. The more chances I get to
win, maybe I’ll get one to luckily fall in and win one.” All but
a handful of amateurs and
celebrities stuck around to
play the fourth rounds Sunday
— and second-round leader
Watson surged back ahead of
Prugh with six birdies in a
round that was steady all the
way until the 18th hole.
Prugh, 25, making his third
PGA Tour start, missed an
easy putt to bogey his final
hole on the SilverRock course,
finishing
another
selfdescribed unremarkable round.
“The way things were going
the first three days, where the
scores were going, I definitely
didn’t think 2 under would
keep me in it,” Prugh said.
Ogilvie appeared the angriest at himself after he doublebogeyed the 17th at La Quinta.
Ogilvie, whose only PGA Tour
victory came in Milwaukee in
2007, paid the price for guessing at a yardage distance.
“My caddie was about 30
yards off,” said Ogilvie, who
hadn’t made a bogey since early
in the second round. “I had
uncertainty on the tee, and it’s
a mistake to hit driver when
you’re not confident standing
there. You can’t have double
bogeys and win the Hope.”
Watson held a lead going
into the final round twice
before, but failed to win the
2007 Houston Open and 2008
Arnold Palmer Invitational.
The cut claimed several of
the tournament’s bigger
names,
including
Justin
Leonard, Rocco Mediate,
David Duval, Parnevik, Chad
Campbell and highly touted 21year-old rookie Rickie Fowler,
whose first two tournaments of
2010 have been nothing special. Fowler missed the cut last
week in Hawaii, and he didn’t
crack 70 in his four rounds in
the Palm Springs desert.
The Hope Classic had its
second straight day of postcard-perfect Palm Springs
scoring weather, with no real
breeze and ideal temperatures.
The beautiful conditions even
brought out a family of eight
bighorn sheep, which moseyed
out of the craggy cliffs and onto
the 16th hole on the Palmer
course to chew on some grass.
The sheep ambled back up
into the rocks before the
group containing Jesper
Parnevik, long-hitting former
Jets
quarterback
Vinny
Testaverde
and
“Burn
Notice” actor Jeffrey Donovan
reached the hole. —AP

Russians seek to regain
its superpower status
MOSCOW: Russia, which still
sees itself as a winter sports
superpower, is optimistic about
its prospects at the Vancouver
Olympic Games despite suffering an unaccustomed slump in
its fortunes last year.
“We believe that up to 40
athletes have a serious chance
of winning medals at the
Games,” said Russia’s Olympic
Committee
chief
Leonid
Tyagachev.
“We are taking into consideration those athletes who were
in their disciplines’ top six at the
world championships and Grand
Prix events this season.”
The Olympic supremo
shrugged off Russia’s poor
showing in the last season’s
winter programme, when the
country managed to win only
three world championship gold
medals in winter disciplines
(two in biathlon and one in figure skating).

“Last year we won only
three gold medals...but we
should acknowledge that we can
seriously improve and increase
our medal haul at the
Olympics,” he added.
“Many of our star athletes
retired after the (2006) Turin
Games, while those who
replaced them were still too
young. “But now they have
picked up enough experience
and, I believe, are ready to
sparkle at Vancouver.”
The Russian ice hockey
team, which has failed to clinch
Olympic gold since Albertville
in 1992 - but has won both of the
last world championships - is
definitely among the Games’ hot
favourites.
However, hosts Canada, who
finished runners-up in the two
previous world championship
finals, are widley-expected to be
in the final, hoping to gain
revenge for those defeats.

Turin Olympic champion
Yevgeny Plushenko, who
capped his return to the sport
with the European title last
week, remains Russia’s main
hope for the Olympic title in figure skating.
In ice dancing, European
champions Oksana Domnina
and Maxim Shabalin, who will
cause more controversy with
their “Aboriginal” performance,
or Yana Khokhlova and Sergei
Novitsky will be chasing
Olympic medals.
Pairs skaters Yuko Kavaguti
and Alexander Smirnov are also
capable of winning one of the
medals in their section.
Meanwhile, the Russian
biathlon federation will be hoping to overcome the consequences of a doping scandal that
rocked the sport when top
Russian biathletes Albina
Ahatova, Yekaterina Iourieva
and Dmitry Yaroshenko were

suspended.
Olga
Zaitseva,
Olga
Medvedtseva,
Svetlana
Sleptsova and Anna Bogaliy will
all look to shine in individual
events and relay. Yevgeny
Ustyugov is a medal hope
amongst the men.
The country’s biathlon chiefs
are aiming for two gold, two silver and two bronze medals in
Vancouver. The 38-year-old
veteran
luger
Albert
Demchenko, who won silver at
Turin, is also in top form for his
sixth Olympics.
The crew of Alexander
Zubkov in bobsleigh fours is also
among Russia’s Olympic medal
hopes along with Yekaterina
Tudegesheva, who won the
2007 world championship in
parallel slalom snowboarding.
Four years ago in Turin,
Russia won 22 medals, including
eight gold, to finish fourth in the
medals table. —AFP

Figure skating a family affair for Satos
YOKOHAMA: Nobuo Sato and daughter Yuka
represented Japan in figure skating at the Winter
Olympics. Now they’ll get a chance to go headto-head as coaches in Vancouver.
Nobuo coaches Japan’s Takahiko Kozuka
while Yuka is the coach of US national champion
Jeremy Abbott, and the two skaters look to be
medal contenders in the men’s event. “It’s
exciting to know we will both be in Vancouver,”
Nobuo Sato said yesterday.
“She’s done a great job as a coach. I don’t
think of us as rivals and am more than happy to
give her some coaching advice when she asks
for it.” Yuka’s career took a major turn when
Abbott left his coach of 10 years, Tom Zakrajsek,
to train with Sato in May. It was a bold move to
make just a year before the Olympics. Abbott
earned a trip to the games by winning his second
straight national title last week.
After winning the national title last year,
Abbott struggled with dismal performances at

the Four Continents and the world championships. That prompted him to make the switch
to Sato in May, a decision many questioned coming so close to the Olympics.
But Abbott had high praise for Sato when he
came to Japan in November for the NHK
Trophy.
“Last season was a big breakthrough for
me,” Abbott said. “But the end of the season
wasn’t that good and I felt like I needed a change.
Yuka has allowed me to skate with a lot of confidence and even when I feel bad I’m able to be
comfortable on the ice.” For the Satos, figure
skating is very much a family affair.
Nobuo, 68, is a ten-time national champion
and competed at the 1960 and 1964 Winter
Olympics. Yuka was the 1994 world champion
and competed at the 1992 and 1994 games.
Yuka’s mother Kumiko competed in the 1964
and 1968 Winter Olympics.
Nobuo has also coached Miki Ando, Yukari

Nakano, Fumie Suguri in addition to Yuka, who
also coaches 2009 U.S. national champion Alissa
Czisny.
Japan will send a total of six skaters to the
men’s and women’s events at Vancouver and
Sato said he’s amazed at the progress Japan has
made in the sport since he competed. “I never
thought Japan could get this far,” Sato said.
“Japan’s society has changed so much since I
was skating. There has been so much economic development. When I was young, it was hard
to take time off studying in school to take part in
sports.” Kozuka, whose father Tsuguhiko competed in figure skating at the 1968 Olympics, will
make his Olympic debut in Vancouver.
Sato said he will try his best to be a calming
influence on the 20-year-old. “Of course, he’s
excited,” Sato said. “There is no doubt the
Olympics are special, but I just try to tell him
it’s like any other major event once he gets on
the ice.” —AP

SPORTS

18
Sports snippets
Toni, Marchisio sidelined
MILAN: Juventus midfielder Claudio
Marchisio joined AS Roma striker Luca
Toni on the sidelines on Monday following
Saturday’s bruising game between the
two sides in Turin. Marchisio will be out
for 20 days with a hamstring problem suffered in free-falling Juve’s 2-1 Serie A
defeat, the already injury-hit club said in a
statement. Roma’s website (www.asroma.it) said on-loan Bayern Munich forward Toni, who like Marchisio hopes to be
in Italy’s World Cup squad, suffered calf
damage before being substituted early in
the game. Media reports said he could be
out for a month.

Serena
sizzles

Barrios in police custody
BUENOS AIRES: Former world boxing
champion Rodrigo “Hyena” Barrios of
Argentina was in police custody yesterday
after crashing his car into four people and
killing a pregnant woman in the seaside
resort of Mar del Plata, local media
reported. Barrios, 33, the World Boxing
Organisation junior featherweight champion in 2005-06, was held on Sunday night
after crashing into three parked cars and
passers-by, police told television
reporters. The pregnant woman died later
in hospital.

C’wealth Games venue
NEW DELHI: India unveiled a refurbished hockey stadium, the first venue to
be completed for this year’s
Commonwealth Games and promised all
other facilities would be ready in time for
the Oct. 3-14 event in New Delhi. India
came under severe criticism after construction of several venues, including the
athletes’ village, fell behind schedule,
forcing the postponement or shifting of
many international meets planned as test
events. “A beginning has been made and
you will now see the 10 remaining competition venues being completed one after
another,” sports minister Manohar Singh
Gill said at the inauguration of the Dhyan
Chand National Hockey Stadium at the
weekend.

Klitschko to face Chambers
BERLIN: World heavyweight
champion Vladimir Klitschko
will defend his title against
American Eddie Chambers in
Duesseldorf’s 51,000-seater Esprit Arena
on March 20, the Ukrainian said yesterday. Klitschko, 33, who holds the WBO,
IBF IBO heavyweight belts last fought in
June when he beat Ruslan Chagaev with a
technical knockout in the ninth round.
“Chambers is clearly the best heavyweight boxer in the United States and is
for good reason ranked top,” said
Klitschko of the 27-year-old. “The fight
will take place in a gigantic stadium and I
am already looking forward to it,”
Klitschko said in a statement.

Libel claim against Modi
LONDON: Former New Zealand allrounder Chris Cairns has
lodged a libel claim with the
High Court in London
against IPL chairman
Lalit Modi. Cairns made
the claim last week in
response to comments
by Modi that he had
been fired from the
Indian Premier
League

Twenty20 competition because of
match-fixing. The
court says it cannot
give any more detail
on the case because
Modi has not had time to respond.

Cabanas shot in Mexico
MEXICO CITY: Paraguay international
Salvador Cabanas is in critical condition after
being shot in the head at a Mexico City bar.
Mexico City Attorney General Miguel Angel
Mancera says two suspects have been
detained. He says it’s not clear whether they
were robbing Cabanas or had gotten into an
argument with him. Cabanas plays for Club
America in Mexico and was slated to play for
Paraguay in the World Cup.

Olympic doping appeal
LAUSANNE: Two Belarusian hammer
throwers have begun giving evidence at an
appeal to win back the Olympic medals that
were stripped from them for doping. Vadim
Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan are attending
a three-day hearing at the Court of
Arbitration for Sport which opened yesterday. A verdict is expected within several
weeks. Devyatovskiy and Tsikhan won silver
and bronze medals in Beijing and then tested
positive for elevated testosterone levels.
The International Olympic Committee took
their medals and disqualified them in
December 2008. The CAS hearing has twice
been rescheduled, and extended from one
day to three.

New Wallaby coach
SYDNEY: Robbie Deans will be Australia
rugby coach until the 2011 World Cup,
despite the Wallabies winning just six of 14
tests last year. Australian Rugby Union chief
executive John O’Neill said Monday the ARU
board had guaranteed the New Zealander’s
tenure through to the next World Cup after
listening to a review of 2009 by Deans and
the ARU’s high performance manager David
Nucifora.

MELBOURNE:
Serena Williams
of the US smiles
as she
celebrates
winning match
point over
Samantha
Stosur of
Australia in
their women’s
singles fourth
round match on
day eight of the
Australian
Open. —AP

MELBOURNE: Serena Williams stamped her authority
on the Australian Open while older sister Venus was
made to look distinctly beatable as the women’s fourth
round was completed yesterday.
Defending champion Serena crushed Australian
hope Samantha Stosur 6-4, 6-2 on Rod Laver Arena,
wiping the 13th seed off court in just 65 minutes.
She will now play Victoria Azarenka in the quarterfinals following the Belarusian’s 4-6, 6-4, 6-0 win over
ninth seeded Russian Vera Zvonareva.
The winner of that match will face either Venus or
Chinese surprise packet Li Na in the semi-finals, but
what initially looked like a straightforward win for Venus
over Li may not be so easy after all.
Venus str uggled to get past Italian 17th seed
Francesca Schiavone 3-6, 6-2, 6-1, while Li stunned
fourth seed Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark 6-4, 63. The 27-year-old Li joined countrywoman Zheng
Jie in the last eight with her win, the first
time two Chinese players have ever
reached that stage of a Grand Slam.
“There is nothing better,” Li said
with a broad grin. “I mean this is good
for us, for both players to reach the
quarter-finals.”
Venus had appeared heading for another early
exit when she could barely get the ball in against
Schiavone in the first set. But she woke up after that and
took control, winning a tough match in a shade under two
hours.
Venus, a seven-time Grand Slam winner, dug deep to
overcome Schiavone as she works to win one of the few
tournaments to elude her.
She is in her 11th Australian Open campaign but is yet
to take the singles crown, in stark contrast to Serena,
who is a four-time champion. But Venus is not beating
herself up about her comparative lack of success in
Melbourne, insisting a major part of her game plan is
staying positive.
She said she could break the drought this year.
“Yeah, I’m ready to go and I feel very good,” said
Williams, who has won five Wimbledons and two US
Open titles.
“Obviously, I’m hitting the ball pretty good, especially against her today. She was really playing well.
“I’m comfortable with my game, absolutely.”
Venus and Li will both be looking over their
shoulders at Serena, who cruised past Stosur then
warned her rivals she can get even better.
The world number one gave herself only a B plus
when asked to rate her game, saying perhaps she
could have returned better. “I think Sam really
burned me on a couple of returns, but she’s serving
incredible,” Serena said.
“It’s really good to match my game against her
serve, because she’s one of the best servers
on the tour.” By rating her game only a B
plus, Serena was being tough on herself as
she never looked in any trouble against
the Australian number one.
She served brilliantly throughout
both sets and dismantled Stosur’s
serve as the match wore on, quickly
silencing the large partisan crowd.
Serena conceded just two points on
serve in the first set and three in the
second to completely demoralise
Stosur.
“I think today it was all about the
serve,” Serena said. “Honestly I’m just hoping I can serve again like that, because that was
pretty cool.”
Serena returned well also, breaking Stosur once in the first set and
twice in the second to wrap
up a comfor table win.
“When someone’s playing
that aggressively and not
giving you anything at all,
she’s pretty hard to beat,” admitted Stosur.—AFP

Justine speaks of life as
having a before and after
MELBOURNE: Justine Henin’s travels
through Congo and Cambodia didn’t begin as a
spiritual journey but ultimately set her on the
path back to tennis.
Now that she has returned, Henin says she
recalls images of those travels daily: The
African baby who took her hand and wouldn’t
let go, the Congolese girl who pleaded, “Take
me back with you to Belgium,” the children
who delighted at seeing their faces in her digital camera. At 27, Henin speaks of her life as
having a before and an after.
Her “first career” was what came before
May 2008, when the seven-time Grand Slam
winner jolted the tennis world by retiring
while ranked No. 1. And there’s her “second
career,” which is off to a stunning start.
Henin advanced to the quarterfinals of the
Australian Open, her second tournament out of
retirement. She mesmerized the crowds with
her sublime one-handed backhand — which
John McEnroe has ranked among the best
shots in the game — her amazing speed and
endless determination. There is little doubt,
that she has a renewed passion for the sport,
which she started as a child prodigy but was
slowly suffocating her.
“I had so much inside me that I couldn’t
express because there was my tennis, and it
took everything. It took everything out of me.
I didn’t know myself enough anymore,” Henin
said in an interview yesterday on the eve of

her quar ter final against Russia’s Nadia
Petrova.
“I’m so happy that I stopped playing tennis
two years ago,” Henin said. “For me, these
two years were the richest years in my existence, because I think it marked my passage to
adulthood.”
Indeed, Henin has changed and matured.
She was always introspective and spoke from
her heart but was also guarded and tense. She
once described herself as “the oldest 24-yearold on the planet.”
“Now I feel like a young 27,” said Henin,
who now offers eloquent self-analysis and is
much quicker to smile. Seated in the player’s
lounge at Melbourne Park, Henin spoke passionately in her native French about her work
abroad as a UNICEF ambassador and other
projects at home that included a reality TV
show called, “The 12 L abors of Justine
Henin,” in which she undertook a different
challenge for each episode.
“What interested me was the aspect of the
challenge,” she said. “It was to do things,
nobody thought I could do. I did comedy, I
sang, I played football with star Belgian football players.”
“It’s a paradox. I’m very timid and very
reserved, but I chose a career that puts me in
the spotlight,” she laughed. “So there must be
a part of me that needs that. It’s about finding
equilibrium.” —AP

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

New ground for Chinese tennis
MELBOURNE: Li Na hailed another major step
forward for Chinese tennis af ter she upset
fourth seed Caroline Wonziacki in straight sets
to reach the quarter-finals of the Australian
Open here yesterday.
The 27-year-old 16th seed joined countrywoman Zheng Jie in the last eight, the first time
two Chinese players have ever reached that
stage of a Grand Slam.
Li will face sixth seed Venus Williams in the
quarters and won their only previous clash at
the 2008 Beijing Olympics in straight sets.
Her 6-4, 6-3 victor y against Wozniacki
marked Li’s best per formance at the Australian
Open, eclipsing her
four th
round
appearance
in
2007. It was the
third time she has
reached the last
eight of a Grand
Slam, but she was
most excited by

joining Zheng in the quarters. Li said tennis was
improving in China and tipped the Chinese men
to start making an impression on the tour before
too long.
“It is because we are working so hard,” she
said “Actually, in China we also have good men
players, but right now they don’t have high
rankings so they always play small tournaments.
“I still believe after three years we will see
more of the best of China’s male tennis players.” In a match dominated by breaks of serve,
Li was down a service break and 4-2 in the first
set, but then rattled off the next six games to
win the first set and be a break up herself in the
second.
The groundstrokes by the pair were as good as
the serving was bad, both players trading powerful winners in an entertaining clash. On the other
hand, Li said she was enjoying the benefits of
being fully fit at the start of the year.“Last year I
didn’t play Australian Open because I had knee
surgery,” she said. “But now that is much better.
“Everyone can see I was running so fast on the
court.”—AFP

Federer, Djokovic rule supreme
MELBOURNE: Roger Federer
blazed into the Australian Open
quarter-finals and a showdown
with Nikolay Davydenko yesterday while Novak Djokovic set up
a rematch of his 2008 final with
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
The Swiss top seed was at
another level to tenacious
Australian 22nd seed and longtime rival Lleyton Hewitt, demolishing him in a dazzling 6-2, 6-3,
6-4 in their 25th meeting.
The win sets up Federer with
a contest against Russian sixth
seed Davydenko, who has won
their last two encounters in Doha
this year and the World Tour
finals in London last November.
Davydenko was dragged into a
fifth set before quenching the
challenge of Spaniard Fernando
Verdasco to fight on in the tournament.
The Russian bungled a fourth
set tiebreaker and had to dig out
a 6-2, 7-5, 4-6, 6-7 (5/7), 6-3 win
over the ninth seeded Verdasco
in almost four hours. Djokovic
plays Tsonga in the other quarter-final in the top half of the
men’s draw.
The Serbian third seed was
too good for unseeded Pole
Lukasz Kubot 6-1, 6-2, 7-5, while
the 10th seeded Tsonga held his
nerve to take out a thrilling five-

setter against Spaniard Nicolas
Almagro 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 6-7 (6/8),
9-7.
Federer further underlined the
gulf existing between him and
Hewitt with his 15th straight victory, but he will have a different
challenge to confront in
Davydenko.
“Davydenko’s one of the good
retur n players in the game,”
Federer said.
He moves
extremely well and makes it hard.
“I’m in for a good match for sure.
I favour my chances in a best-offive set match. We’ll see how it
goes.”
There was only a momentary
spark to fire up the willing home
crowd when Hewitt broke
Federer’s service for the only
time in the eighth game of the
third set.
But the Swiss great unleashed
a sensational forehand cross
court volley to immediately break
back in the next game. It lifted
Federer’s imposing record over
former world number one Hewitt
to 17-8 and was his 51st match
win at the Australian Open with
seven defeats.
Davydenko hadn’t dropped a
set before his round of 16 match
with Verdasco but he messed up
a fourth set tiebreaker and was
forced into a fifth set.

The in-form Russian improved
his winning streak to 13 matches
and is in the right frame to take
on the Federer challenge.
“Mentally, I’m still strong. I
don’t know if I can win here, but
I’m feeling good about my tennis
right now,” Davydenko said.
Djokovic warned he was hitting
his best form after his impressive
win over Kubot.
The Pole, ranked 86th in the
world, had been gifted a spot in
the fourth round by the withdrawal of Russian 20th seed
Mikhail Youzhny from their third
round clash, and found Djokovic
far too good.
“In general, I was very happy
with the way I performed today,”
Djokovic said. “I’m aware the
matches will get more difficult
throughout this week, so I’m
ready for it.”
Tsonga, who played in his first
five-set match, will go in against
Djokovic with the edge, having
won four of their five clashes
since their 2008 meeting here. “I
beat him four times since that
moment,” he said. “So I have
learned to beat him. “I don’t have
any fears. “I have to recover and
I will be ready for that. Against
him I have to say stay aggressive,
very aggressive, and give everything.” — AFP

MELBOURNE: Roger Federer of Switzerland returns to Australia’s Lleyton
Hewitt during their Men’s singles fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship. —AP

SPORTS

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

19

England’s Swann sparkles on and off the field
LONDON: Graeme Swann sings in the band
Dr Comfort and the Lurid Revelations,
prefers to bowl in sunglasses and seems set
on redefining the adjective chirpy.
Yet behind the bonhomie and the wisecracks stands a considerable cricketer who
last year became the first England spinner
to take more than 50 test wickets in a calendar year.
The emergence of the 30-year-old
Englishman over the past 12 months as a
match-winner with the ball and an enterprising lower-order batsman who averages
almost 33 in test cricket has been startling.
Swann, by his own admission, was too
callow a youth to linger long in the international arena when he played a one-day international in Bloemfontein in 2000.
He returned to county cricket to learn

his trade and, again on his own admission,
coasted on the spin-friendly pitches at
Northamptonshire before moving to
Nottinghamshire.
A steep learning curve at a county where
seam bowlers rule has resulted in him
becoming an off-spinner with an energetic
action who gives the ball a rip from the first
delivery, varies his pace and flight intelligently and is always looking to take wickets.
Swann’s ebullient approach paid off handsomely when he dismissed India’s Gautam
Gambhir and Rahul Dravid in his first over
in test cricket in Chennai and he retains an
uncanny knack of taking a wicket in his first
over of a new spell.
He overtook Monty Panesar as
England’s first-choice spinner last year and
played a prominent role in his team’s wins at

Lord’s and the Oval, which won back the
Ashes from Australia.
Swann finished the year with two manof-the-match awards in South Africa, including a match-winning performance in the second test in Durban.
It was the first time since 1964, when
Fred Titmus and David Allen rolled over the
Springboks also in an innings victory, that
spin had won a test for England in South
Africa.
Swann’s performances came as a member of a four-man attack, which meant he
was thrown the ball earlier than he would
normally have expected on pitches which
rarely give much aid to the orthodox spinner.
“Obviously going into it with a four-man
attack I was expected to do the job, to do the

donkey work so it’s nice to pick up a few
wickets along the way,” he told reporters.
“Two man-of-the-match awards in two
games, I’ll take that to finish off the year
quite nicely.” Not the least remarkable
aspect of a remarkable 12 months has been
Swann’s role in the unexpected re-emergence of the finger spinner.
Doped pitches prepared to last a minimum five days, bats designed to propel the
ball vast distances and the aggressive mindset of batsmen in the Twenty20 era
appeared to have spelt the end for bowlers
who do not employ the wrist to deliver a
variety of mystery deliveries.
Instead Swann, South African left-armer
Paul Harris and Australian Nathan Hauritz
have joined New Zealand captain Daniel
Vettori as effective test bowlers.

Swann, though, is clearly now the leader
of the gang and even Shane Warne could not
have bettered the dismissals of Ricky
Ponting and Michael Clarke last year when
the Australian pair groped ineffectually at
balls which dipped and spun prodigiously on
to their stumps. While hugely enjoying the
glamorous life of a test cricketer, Swann
remains a realist.
He knows he has been helped by the proliferation of left-handers in test cricket at
the moment, to whom his stock delivery is
the more dangerous leg-break. Umpires are
also now more inclined to give lbws on the
front foot after the advent of ball-tracking
technologies which show more deliveries
would have gone on to hit the stumps than
previously thought.
“The game goes in circles; in three or

four years’ time it (finger spin) will be completely out of vogue again so I’ll just enjoy
the fairground ride while I can,” Swann said.
“You know, 15 years ago no one teed off
the from the start in one-day cricket. There
was no such thing as Twenty20. The whole
thing goes in circles. It will come back round
sooner or later, a brilliant mystery spinner
will arrive and I’ll be defunct.”
As England have failed to produce a mystery spinner since Bernard Bosanquet
invented the googly at the turn of the 20th
century, Swann’s place looks safe for the
time being.
Now he must prepare for the ultimate
test awaiting him in Australia, the graveyard of so many England spinners’ hopes,
when England defend the Ashes at the end
of the year. — Reuters

Tendulkar, Dravid put
India in driver’s seat

Dodo’s hat-trick sinks Botafogo

Dodo scores hat-trick in Vasco’s rout of Botafogo
SAO PAULO: Veteran striker Dodo scored a
first-half hat trick in just his third match back
from a two-year doping suspension to help
Vasco rout a 10-man Botafogo 6-0 in the Rio
de Janeiro state championship on Sunday.
Dodo, 35, opened the scoring just three
minutes into the match at Engenhao stadium
with a low shot from the top of the area. He
added to the lead in the 32nd with a rightfooted strike from close range and complet-

ed the hat trick two minutes later with a shot
from inside the area.
Midfielder Leo Gago increased Vasco’s
lead with a powerful free strike in the 56th,
and striker Phillipe Coutinho closed the
scoring with goals in the 60th and 82nd.
Botafogo played a man down from the 14th
minute after midfielder Eduardo was shown
a red card for a hard foul on Vasco midfielder
Souza. Dodo, who played briefly for Brazil in
the late 1990s, was suspended after testing
positive for the banned stimulant fenproporex while playing for rival Botafogo in a
match against Vasco in the 2007 Brazilian
league. The match marked the debut of
Botafogo’s biggest acquisition for 2010 —
Uruguay striker Sebastian Abreu, who
ended substituted early in the second half.
Vasco has now won three straight games to
open the Guanabara Cup, the first stage of
the Rio de Janeiro state tournament.
Another three-time winner this season in
Rio is Fluminense, which defeated Volta
Redonda 1-0 at Maracana stadium with a goal
by defender Leandro Euzebio in the fifth
minute. Fluminense, which played without
star striker Fred because of a minor injury,
has outscored its opponents 7-0 in its first
three matches.
On Saturday, former CSKA Moscow
striker Vagner Love scored a pair of goals in
his debut with Flamengo, helping the

Brazilian champion beat Bangu 2-1 at
Engenhao stadium for its third win in a row.
Love left Palmeiras earlier this year after
being attacked by fans who were upset with
his performance. Flamengo is the defending
champion in the Rio de Janeiro championship, which is divided in two stages. The
winner of the Guanabara Cup will face the
Rio Cup champion for the state title.
America, coached by former striker
Bebeto and directed by Bebeto’s former
Brazil teammate Romario, defeated Macae
3-2 in Campos for its first win of the year.
In the Sao Paulo state championship,
defending champion Corinthians picked up
its second consecutive win by beating Oeste
2-1. Defender Paulo Andre scored in the
27th and midfielder Boquita added another in
the 35th. Striker Ronaldo was rested by
Corinthians, but left back Roberto Carlos
played the entire match at the Fonte
Luminosa in Araraquara.
At Palestra Italia stadium, World Cup veteran midfielder Juninho Paulista scored a
second-half goal to help Ituano draw
Palmeiras 3-3. The 36-year-old Juninho is
also the president of Ituano, which twice
erased a two-goal deficit against the fourtime national champion. Palmeiras, which
played a man down from the 61st after midfielder Gualberto was sent off, led 3-1 with
10 minutes to play. —AP

Ronaldo’s temper could hurt Real’s title hopes
MADRID: Cristiano Ronaldo’s
temper is still getting the better of him, and it could prove
costly in Real Madrid’s pursuit of the Spanish League
title. The Portugal forward
scored both goals in Sunday’s
2-0 victory over Malaga
before being sent off for an
elbow smash that broke the
nose of defender Patrick
Mtiliga.
The
dismissal
was
Ronaldo’s second of the season and will result in a onegame ban at least unless
Madrid’s expected appeal is
successful. The first came
against Almeria in December
for intentionally kicking out at
a player.
“He who understands football knows my intention is
always to play. That red card is
an embarrassment. I don’t
understand these types of
things,” Ronaldo said. “That
isn’t a red (card) here or in
any other place in the world,
and I’m not saying that
because I want protection.
Here in Spain there are a lot of
good things, but also bad
ones.”
While Mtiliga came off with
blood flowing from his nose
and will now miss three
weeks, Ronaldo left in disbelief
at the decision.
“You have to be fair when
looking at what happened. I
didn’t mean to harm him,”
Ronaldo said. “I’ve seen worse
incidents than that in other
games.” Madrid director general Jorge Valdano said Mtiliga
was tugging Ronaldo’s shirt

MADRID: Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, reacts during his
Spanish League soccer match against Malaga. — AP
and believes referees need to
do better. “A referee should
know who’s doing something
for the ‘show’ and who’s doing
something to interrupt it,”
Valdano said. “When (Ronaldo)
was grabbed from behind, he
tried to break free because he
always has the intention of
playing, while others would
throw themselves to the
ground and simulate a foul.”
Mtiliga accepted an apology from Ronaldo after the incident but said he didn’t expect

Madrid’s outcry. “I’m surprised that people say I’m the
bad guy in this movie,”
Mtiliga said on Monday. “I was
bleeding and when I got into
the changing room I noticed
that my nose was in a position
it shouldn’t have been.”
Ronaldo could be banned for
up to three games just when
Madrid needs his goals with
rival Barcelona in great form.
The defending Spanish champions have won their last three
matches by a combined 12-0

score to finish the first half of
the season unbeaten with a
five-point advantage over
Madrid. Madrid plays at
Deportivo La Coruna on
Sunday at El Riazor stadium,
where it has lost six straight
times and hasn’t won in nearly
two decades. It will be without
leading
striker
Gonzalo
Higuain, who has 11 goals, and
Ronaldo, who has nine.
Barcelona, meanwhile, travels
to Sporting Gijon where it
won 6-1 last season. —AP

DHAKA: Sachin Tendulkar and
Rahul Dravid smashed centuries as India took a firm grip
of the second and final Test
against Bangladesh by cruising
to a 226-run lead yesterday.
Tendulkar,
who
also
reached triple figures in the
first test, completed his 45th
Test century as India ended
the second day on 459 for five.
His stylish knock of 143 off
182 balls included 13 fours and
a six before he was caught by
Imrul Kayes off Shakib Al
Hasan at short midwicket.
Dravid who also racked up
12 fours, retired hurt on 111
when a bouncer from paceman
Shahadat Hossain stuck on him
on the helmet.
Tendulkar and Dravid added
222 runs for the third wicket
and in the process became the
most successful pair to put a
century partnership in test
cricket.
They have been involved in
17 100-plus partnerships, one
better then Australian Ricky
Ponting and Mathew Hayden
and West Indies’ Gordon
Greenidge and Desmond
Haynes.
“It’s a two-pace wicket. The
bounce was also inconsistent.
It was not an easy track to bat
on,” Tendulkar told reporters.
“They had defensive fields.
They had fielders on the
boundary lines. It was not that
easy to get the scoreboard
ticking at a rate that we would
have liked. “Then there were
patches (when) we scored a lot
of boundaries and made sure
the run rate was a decent one.”
Spinner Harbhajan Singh,
who was earlier reprimanded
by the International Cricket
Council for kicking and damaging an advertising board on the
first day of the test, was promoted up the order as nightwatchman but failed to last out
the day when he was dismissed
for 13 to end the day”s proceedings.
The hosts were left to rue
two missed chances to dismiss
Tendulkar with Raqibul Hasan
dropping him at gully on 27 and
53 off the bowling of Rubel
Hossain and Shahadat Hossain.
That followed Shafiul Islam
missing a good chance to run
out Dravid when the former
skipper was on 12. The bowler
failing to touch the ball that
dismantled the stumps at the
non-striking end with the batsman well out of his crease.
Dravid also escaped dismissal when on 28 as Junaid
Siddique caught him at slip off
a Rubel Hossain no-ball.
Resuming on 69-0, India lost
Virender Sehwag early when
the opener reacted slowly to a
short delivery off Shahadat and
edged a catch to wicketkeeper
Mushfiqur Rahim.
Sehwag had added 15 runs
to his overnight total before
falling for 56 off 63 balls including eight boundaries. The dismissal brought to an end of
103-run opening partnership
between Sehwag and Gautam
Gambhir.
Gambhir was out in almost
identical fashion off the bowling of Shafiul Islam after making 68 runs off 83 balls. This
was the 11th consecutive test
in which Gambhir had scored a
fifty to equal the world record
by West Indies” Viv Richards.
India lead the two-match
series 1-0 after wrapping up a
113-run win in Chittagong on
Thursday. — AFP

DHAKA: India’s Sachin Tendulkar (center) and Rahul Dravid run between
the wickets for runs as Bangladesh’s Shahadat Hossainon (right) watches
during the second day of the second cricket Test. — AP

Pakistan in U-19 final
WELLINGTON: All-rounder
Hammad
Azam
inspired
Pakistan to a four-wicket win
over the West Indies at
Christchurch yesterday to book
their place in the finals of the
under-19 cricket World Cup.
The second finalist will be
determined in the other semifinal between Sri Lanka and
Australia on Wednesday.
Pakistan won the toss and
struck early with two wickets in

the first four overs before West
Indies
opener
Kraigg
Brathwaite led the fightback as
the Caribbean side posted 212
for eight in their 50 overs.
Brathwaite, who top scored
with 85 before he was run out,
anchored the recovery with
Andre Creary in a 101-run stand
for the third wicket. The West
Indies appeared to be in command when they tied the
Pakistan openers down and had

them at 49-4 after 20 overs.
But man-of-the-match Azam
turned the innings around with
a whirlwind 92 off 93 balls
including 10 boundaries as
Pakistan reached their target
with 16 balls to spare.
Azam put on 90 in 19 overs
in a fifth-wicket stand with
Rameez Aziz (39) before adding
64 in nine overs with wicketkeeper Muhammad Waqas (29)
for the sixth wicket. — AFP

Al-Baz, Bu Rabie’a top
UAE Jet-Ski Tournament
DUBAI: “Pro Rider” racer,
Mohammad Jassem Al-Baz,
from Kuwait continued his
emergence at the Emirates
Jet-Ski Tournament, after he
came in first place in the second round of the ‘1600cc’ race
that recently took place in
Dubai, and for the second time
in a row, whereas Kuwaiti
racer, Mohammad Bu Rabie’a,
from “Abyat and Safwat AlKuwait” team came in second
place according to a press
release.
As for other Kuwaiti racers,
Saud Al-Shareefi came in third
place in the ‘standing’ race,
while Yousuf Al-Abdulraziq
came in third place in the
‘1600cc - adjusted’ race,
whereas Abdurrahman AlBadr finished in fifth place,
while Khalid Salem Bu Rabie’a
could not finish his race after
his jet-ski experienced technical difficulties.
On his regard, reigning
champion of the ‘1600cc’ race,
World and Emirates champion
Mohammad
Bu
Rabie’a
acknowledged the achieve-

Bu Rabie’a and Al-Baz
ment that his compatriot and
teammate Mohammad Al-Baz
has achieved, adding that the
level of competition between
them reflects the high level of
qualifications that the Kuwaiti

racers have, while acknowledging at the same time the
support that the Kuwait Sea
Sports Club provides for them.
The next round will take place
on Feb 5 in Abu Dhabi.

www.kuwaittimes.net

CAIRO: An Egyptian woman waves her national flag from inside a car as she
celebrates in Cairo after Egypt beat Cameroon in their African Nations Cup
quarter-final football match.—AFP

BENGUELA: A Cameroon fan cheers his team
before the quarterfinal match between Cameroon
and Egypt in the African Nations Cup.—AFP

CAIRO: Egyptians drive through a street in Cairo as they celebrate after
Egypt beat Cameroon in their African Nations quarter-final football
match.—AFP

Egypt down Cameroon, set up Algeria rematch
BENGUELA: Aided by a brace from skipper
Ahmed Hassan, Egypt defeated 10-man
Cameroon 3-1 after extra-time in an Africa
Cup of Nations quarter-final match here yesterday.
Egypt’s prize is a mouth-watering lastfour showdown on Thursday against bitter
rivals Algeria, who pipped the Egyptians to a
World Cup ticket in dramatic circumstances
in November.
The Pharaohs thus improved to 17
matches their unbeaten run in the tournament and also extended their five-year
superiority over the Indomitable Lions.
Egypt assistant coach Shawki Gharib
saluted Cameroon for pushing his team all
the way, while defending the performance of

South African referee Jerome Damon.
“Cameroon are a great team and they
pushed us very hard,” said Gharib. “We, on
our own part, played very well and knew
what we needed to do to win this match.
“However, a match is all about 90 minutes and there are no games without mistakes, but overall the referee was fair to
both teams.” Cameroon skipper Samuel
Eto’o disagreed, saying: “The referee supported Egypt a bit because they did not
deserve to win this game.
“But I won’t blame the referee because
this is Africa and we still have a lot to learn,”
Eto’o said, adding that coach Paul Le Guen
had angrily walked out on the post-match
press conference.

Cameroon, who saw defender Aurelien
Chedjou red carded in the 112th minute for
a professional foul on Mohamed Nagy,
opened the scoring in the 26th minute courtesy of an own goal by Hassan, winning an
African record 170th cap.
Hassan got the slightest touch with his
head on an Achille Emana corner at the near
post as it sailed into the net.
Hassan turned from villain to hero in the
37th minute when he caught goalkeeper
Carlos Kameni napping with a dipping shot
from over 35 yards, which bounced in front
of the Cameroon goalkeeper before resting
at the back of the net to draw the champions
level. A faulty back pass two minutes into
extra-time by Geremi Njitap found super

sub Mohamed ‘Gedo’ Nagy, who slotted
home between Kameni’s legs to give Egypt
the lead in this pulsating encounter.
The defending champions increased their
lead on 95 minutes when a curling freekick
by Hassan was adjudged to have been
palmed beyond the goalline by Kameni.
Television replays showed that the ball did
not cross the line.
Man of the hour Hassan was unperturbed
by the controversy. “I’m very happy
because we won today,” he said. “We played
a very good match, and I’m thrilled to score
two goals and also with the record of 170
appearances.”
In the 110th minute, Nagy dashed free
through the Cameroon defence but Kameni

made a brave save. The game appeared to
slip away for the Lions of Cameroon when
Chedjou was sent off moments later.
Cameroon fought to reduce the deficit in
the second half of extra-time but Egypt kept
their shape to stay on course for an unprecedented seventh Nations Cup title.
From the kick-off, Cameroon took the
game to their opponents, forcing five corners in the first 11 minutes, while Egypt’s
first attack came only after six minutes
when Ahmed Fathi had a shot.
Cameroon continued to dictate the pace
of this contest and more than deserved their
lead when it came in the 25th minute.
Six minutes after their equaliser, Hosny
Abdrabou would have given Egypt the lead

but he failed to direct his header on target
when all alone inside the 18-yard box.
Cameroon’s response was immediate as
Emana fired a pile driver from distance a
minute later but Essam El-Hadary was alert
to push the ball out of harm’s way.
From the restart, Egypt would have gone
in front when Chedjou mistimed a long ball
into the Cameroon area, Motaaeb got a foot
to the ball but somehow Kameni gathered
the ball. Minutes later, Zidan with a lot of
space to spare shot inches wide as the
Cameroon defence came under siege.
Chedjou again succumbed to pressure in
the 49th minute when he was robbed of the
ball by Zidan on the edge of the box, but
Kameni made a fine save.—AFP

Algeria match will be ‘war’: Zidan
BENGUELA: Egypt striker Mohamed Zidan
says his team’s Africa Cup of Nations semifinal against Algeria here on Thursday will
be a ‘war’, which Egypt have to win to prove
they deserved to feature at the World Cup.
Egypt failed to qualify for this year’s
World Cup in South Africa after bitter
regional rivals Algeria pipped them 1-0 in a
play-off in Sudan after both teams were tied
on the same points and goal difference in the
qualifiers.

In November, both the World Cup qualifier in Cairo and the subsequent play-off in
Sudan witnessed several violent scenes that
world football ruling body FIFA are now
investigating.
“It will be a matter of life and death in
that game. For both sides it will be like a
war,” said the Borussia Dortmund star after
the Pharaohs defeated Cameroon 3-1 in a
Nations Cup quarter-final yesterday. “For
us it is a chance to show the world that we

deserve to go to the World Cup and if we
beat them, we will be able to watch the
World Cup with pride.
“We are the ones who do not have any
pressure. We are the champions and we are
better than them. Everybody will see which
is the better team.”
Egypt are on course for a record seventh
Nations Cup title in Angola after they won
the continental trophy in 1957, 1959, 1986,
1998, 2006 and 2008.—AFP

LUBANGO: Nigeria goalkeeper
Victor Enyeama turned Africa
Nations Cup match winner by
converting the decisive kick in a
5-4 penalty shootout win over
Zambia yesterday after a goalless
quarter-final.
John Obi Mikel, Obafemi
Martins, Obinna Nsofor and
Osaze Odemwingie also scored
from the spot to give the ‘Super
Eagles’ a 100 percent success
rate from five kicks.
Thomas Nyirenda was the
unconsolable Zambian at the end
after Enyeama saved his kick the seventh of the shootout - and
Nigeria scraped through despite
having Onyekachi Apam sent off
during extra time.
The ultra-negative last quarter-final of the biennial African
football showcase was a massive
disappointment after victories for
Ghana, Algeria and Egypt in
thrillers.
Defending champions Egypt
made the penultimate stage a few
hours before Nigeria thanks to a
3-1 extra-time triumph over
Cameroon with 170-cap midfielder Ahmed Hassan scoring twice
for his side and once for his opponents. Back in the knockout
phase of the competition for the
first time since 1996, Zambia had
to make two enforced changes
from the side that defeated Gabon
to reach the quarter-finals as
shock Group D table-toppers.
Defender Chintu Kampamba
and midfielder Rainford Kalaba
collected two yellow cards each in

LUBANGO: Danny Shittu of Nigeria (left) and Jacob Mulenga of Zambia
(right) fight for the ball during their quarter final match at the African
Nations Cup. —AP
the mini-league stage and young
French coach Herve Renard
drafted in Hichani Himonde and
William Njobvu.
Nigeria retained the starting
line-up from their final pool match
against Mozambique that delivered an ultimately convincing 3-0
win and justification that they
could go far in the tournament
after a sluggish start.
Jubilant that his pre-tourna-

Algeria send England World Cup warning
LUANDA: Up until Sunday Fabio
Capello’s England must have been rubbing their hands at having been drawn
with Algeria in their World Cup first
round group.
Rabah Saadane’s Desert Foxes had
failed to make much of an imprint in their
three Africa Cup of Nations first round
games, limping into the quarter-finals
after a dismal 3-0 loss to Malawi, a 1-0 win
over Mali and a contentious goalless draw
with hosts Angola.
But Algeria silenced their critics in no
uncertain fashion with a superb 3-2 extra
time win over Cup favourites Ivory Coast
on Sunday night in Cabinda to send a clear
message to their World Cup rivals underestimate us at your peril.
The North Africans are drawn in the

same World Cup first round group as
England, the United States and Slovenia,
and Saadane, a former defender with
French side Rennes, believes this Angola
dress rehearsal is proving an invaluable
experience for South Africa.
Algeria are not the first team to start a
competition like this slowly, gradually
finding their stride as the competition progresses - witness France at the 2006
World Cup.
Raymond Domenech’s men looked
down and out after a goalless draw against
Switzerland and a 1-1 draw with South
Korea, but then produced a performance
seemingly from nowhere to knock out
Spain in the second round, followed by
wins over Brazil and Portugal to make it
the final itself. The similarity does not end

there. Domenech injected a ‘bunker mentality’ in his squad in Germany 2006,
using all the criticism directed at his team
to motivate his players. Saadane has done
the same, using the attacks by the
Algerian media to trigger a positive
response from his men. Algeria wait now
to find out whether it will be bitter rivals
Egypt or Cameroon lining up alongside
them in Thursday’s semi-final in
Benguela as they move to within one
game of making the final and a shot at
their first title since 1990.
The surprise winners fell 2-1 behind
on 89 minutes to a brilliant Abdulkader
Keita goal only for Rangers defender
Madjid Bougherra to level in stoppage
time and unmarked substitute Hamer
Bouazza headed a 92nd-minute far-post

winner. Saadane, in his fifth spell as
Algeria manager, was assistant coach at
the 1982 World Cup, and head coach at
the 1986 World Cup when Algeria failed
to make it out of the first round after a
draw with Northern Ireland and losses to
Brazil and Spain. After Sunday’s quarterfinal victory he said: “I am really happy.
We came up with what we wanted. “I wasn’t surprised by my team, but more by the
decline of the Ivory Coast side. The critics
said after we beat Mali (1-0) that we only
scored goals from dead ball situations,
well here we scored three goals from
open play!”
Rangers defender Bougherra added:
“Many people wrote our chances off. This
victory is for the people of Algeria all over
the world.” Man of the match Karim

Matmour, who scored his country’s opening goal, said: “This wasn’t an easy match
against a great team but we have qualified
and what’s more qualified in style.”
Saadane meanwhile played down fears
of any repeat of the stormy and violent
scenes that were triggered by their last
three encounters against Egypt, should
the defending champions emerge as their
semi-final rivals.
“In our three games against Egypt
everything passed off smoothly on the
pitch. You have to stop talking about that
(the animosity between the two countries),” he insisted. The man who goes by
the name of ‘Cheikh’ added: “I know my
Algerian players are motivated by the big
matches. We came here to win and we
produced what we wanted.”—AFP

ment promise of a quarter-finals
place had been met, Renard saw
the game as a chance to embellish
his reputation amid reports that
he desires a more attractive
African coaching post.
Rival coach Shaibu Amodu is
10 years older at 51 and under
constant stress from public and
media criticism despite just one
competitive loss since taking
charge of the national team a third
time a couple of years ago.
The countries had come face
to face four previous times in the
Nations Cup with Nigeria winning
two and Zambia one after a goalless first meeting in Ghana 32
years ago.
And after a goalless first half in
this central Angolan town it was
hard to fathom who would prevail
this time and book a semi-finals
date with the Black Stars of
Ghana in Luanda on Thursday
afternoon.
Chelsea midfielder Mikel
ended a lot of cagey early combat
with a sweetly struck drive after
some slick passing, but Kennedy
Mweene dived swiftly to his left
and pushed the ball away with a
strong one-hand save.
Zambia became more adventurous as time passed and after
Enyeama rose to grasp a deep,
dangerous cross, striker James
Chamanga just failed to connect
with a threatening ball across the

six-yard box. It was not a half for
the faint hearted with some borderline tackling and by the break
Zambians
Felix
Katongo,
Himonde and Joseph Musonda
had been shown yellow cards by
the Egyptian referee.
The second half began as the
first ended with more than fouls
than thrills for a less-thancapacity crowd in the 20,000-seat
venue and Apam joined the yellow-card offenders via a rash tackle on Chamanga.
Midway through the half and
finally the crowd had something
to cheer as Yusuf Mohammed
cleared off the line to rescue
Nigeria and hesitant captain
Yakubu Aiyegbeni squandered a
close-range opportunity at the
other end.
It was painful watching the
closing stages of regulation time
as two teams far more concerned
with not losing than winning
rarely mounted threatening
attacks and full-time came without a goal.—AFP

Kuwait’s Global warns on Dubai debt risk
Dubai may have long-lasting effects on region: Ghunaim
RIYADH:
Global Investment
House has yet to gauge the full
effect of the Dubai debt crisis,
warning that it may have long-lasting effects on the region’s financial
sector, the Kuwaiti bank’s founder
said.
Global took enough impairment
charges and provisions to cover it
against further investment loss or
bad loans, said Maha Al-Ghunaim in
an interview with Reuters, but
warned that the effect of Dubai’s
debt crisis may drag on.
“I thought we had enough provisioning and then the Dubai crisis
made us rethink our position. You
don’t know how deep this is going
to go or how far it is going to go,”
Ghunaim, who is also the bank’s
managing director, said.
Yesterday, the once high-flying
emirate of Dubai endured another
blow after Standard & Poor’s withdrew its rating on a unit of Dubai

Holding, the major investment
vehicle owned by the ruler of
Dubai, citing a “materially weaker”
cash position and a lack of information.
Ghunaim made her comments
before the S&P statement was
issued. Once a regional powerhouse, Global is a major investment
company that had overstretched
itself just as the global economic
crisis hit. Earlier this month,
Global’s shareholders approved its
$1.7 billion restructuring plan after
the firm reached a deal with its
roughly 50 creditors to reschedule
debt.
Like many other Gulf Arab companies awash with cash in the heyday of a regional economic boom
and high oil prices, Global went on
an expansion spree from China to
Tunisia as a way to diversify its revenue stream. But Global learnt lessons from the economic fallout. The

firm revamped its business model
and is flexing its muscles once
again for a fresh start where it will
focus on investment banking, asset
management
and
brokerage,
Ghunaim said. “Our priorities have
changed. Today our priorities are
very much focused to repay our
debt and deleveraging the company,
that’s number one,” she said.
“Obviously, Global today is not
in the business of putting further
cash into certain companies as it
was years ago. That business model
has changed.” As part of its new
strategy, the firm will scale back
investments, sell assets to get cash
and increase its assets under management, she said. The firm is also
focusing more on big economies
such as Saudi Arabia.
“We are very much focused on
Saudi Arabia ... to provide investment products that are extremely
needed and can add value,” said

Ghunaim, who was once named one
of the world’s 100 most powerful
women by Forbes Magazine.
“Geographically, we need to
focus our attention, you can’t be
everywhere, anywhere.”
Dubai shocked world markets on
Nov. 25 when it requested a standstill on $26 billion worth of debt
owed by state-owned conglomerate
Dubai World, a flagship of the emirate. Global has no direct exposure
to Dubai’s debt. Ghunaim had said
earlier this month that she was
optimistic about the firm’s growth
prospects this year and sees a
“huge improvement” in its full-year
2009 earnings despite booking
higher provisions in the fourth
quarter. Global saw a full-year loss
in 2008 of KD257.6 million ($898.5
million) mainly due to impairment
charges for investments and loans,
compared with a profit of KD91.4
million in 2007. — Reuters

S&P deals blow to Dubai Holding unit, pulls rating
DUBAI: Standard & Poor’s
pulled its rating on a unit of
Dubai Holding, dealing a fresh
blow to the Gulf Arab Emirate’s
financial reputation and drawing
fresh scrutiny from investors.
The ratings agency cut
Dubai Holding Commercial
Group (DHCOG) to B from
BB+ and then withdraw the
rating altogether, citing its
“materially weaker” cash position and a lack of information.
“It was certainly a very
severe note, and seems to lend
credence to the doubts that
have been expressed about
Dubai Holding for some time,”
said David Butter, director for
the Middle East and North
Africa
at
Economist
Intelligence Unit, in London.
Dubai rocked global markets
on Nov 25 when it sought a debt
delay on $26 billion linked to its
flagship conglomerate, Dubai
World. DHCOG-the holding
firm of Dubai Holding’s property, business parks and hospitality units which includes the
planned Tiger Woods golf
resort-is part of an investment
vehicle owned by Dubai’s ruler.
In a statement, DHCOG dismissed the S&P announcement
which it said contained inaccuracies and factual errors, and
said the ratings agency did not
understand its operations or its
relationship with the Dubai
government.
Dubai has faced heavy criticism over its lack of transparency especially in the wake of
November’s debt news. Earlier
this month, the government
acknowledged a $10 billion lifeline from Abu Dhabi in
December-which helped Dubai
World stave off bankruptcy on a
$4.1 billion Islamic bond by a
property unit-included $5 billion that was previously
announced.
“I think the market already
assumes all these Dubai Inc
entities have more debt issues
that they need to work out, but
the worry is that transparency
seems to be getting worse,
which could be an issue going
forward,”
said
Robert
McKinnon, chief investment
officer at ASAS Capital in
Dubai.
“Without proper transparency, we cannot know the true
value of the assets Dubai entities own or the true size and
scale of their debts.” “We
understand from the information we have gathered that cash
flow generation for Dubai
Holding
Commercial
Operations Group is likely to be
materially weaker than we initially expected, which in our
view significantly deteriorates
DHCOG’s liquidity position,”
S&P analyst Pierre Georges said
in a statement. S&P said the unit
could face difficulty in refinancing and it was doubtful the Dubai
government would lend it support. Dubai credit default swaps
stood at 455 basis points, 10
basis points tighter than
Friday’s close. — Reuters

Kuwait’s money supply
growth up 13.1% in Dec
KUWAIT: Kuwaiti money supply growth (M3) accelerated to
13.1 percent at the end of December, from 11.4 percent in the
previous month, data showed yesterday.
M3, the broadest measure of money circulating in the economy, rose to KD24.89 billion ($86.81 billion) in December, compared with KD22 billion a year earlier, the central bank said in a
monthly bulletin.
Narrow money, or M1, rose 7.78 percent to KD4.71 billion.
Quasi money-which includes savings and time deposits in
dinars, as well as foreign currency deposits-rose 14.8 percent to
KD20.18 billion, the data showed. Banks’ total claims on the private sector, which also include their local investments,
advanced 6.09 percent in the year to December to KD27 billion.
Total credit facilities concluded with residents fell 11.9 percent in the year to December to KD844.2 million-down from
KD894.1 million in November. — Reuters

UAE telecom watchdog
issues competition rules

LONDON: Shoppers are pictured on Oxford Street in central London yesterday. The UK’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures
for the fourth quarter of 2009 are expected to be released today. — AFP

Obama unveils package for middle class
WASHINGTON:
US
President Barack Obama
yesterday proposed a package of new initiatives aimed
at helping middle-class
families,
including
an
expanded child-care tax
credit and help with retirement savings.
The initiatives come as
Obama is taking a more
populist turn in his rhetoric, pledging to fight for the
middle class and taking a
tougher line toward Wall
Street. A year into his presidency, Obama and his
Democratic Party are seeing an erosion of his support among middle-class
Americans who swept him
into office.
Frustration with the 10
percent unemployment rate
and
wariness
toward
Obama’s plans to change
the healthcare system
helped set the stage for a
shocking
loss
by
Democrats last week in a
Massachusetts Senate race.
At around noon EST (1700
GMT), the president will
outline the child-care credit
and other measures that
will also be discussed in his
State of the Union speech.
Obama
will
address
Congress and the nation at

US existing home sales fall in December
WASHINGTON: Sales of US existing homes
fell more than expected in December, by
nearly 17 percent, following a three-month
surge driven by a government tax credit, an
industry organization said yesterday.
The National Association of Realtors
(NAR) said sales fell 16.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million
units, from 6.54 million in November. The
sharp decline was worse than average analyst
forecast of 5.9 million units and was the
steepest monthly drop since NAR began
tracking the data series in 1999.
The industry group said the decline was
expected after sales surged from September
through November as first-time buyers
rushed to take advantage of federal tax credits originally due to expire on November 30.
Congress passed and President Barack
Obama signed an extension of the first-time
tax credit that expands it to include other
home purchases made prior to April 30.
The December number was 15.0 percent
9:00 p.m. tomorrow (0200
GMT on Thursday) in a
speech designed to lay out
the challenges and set the
tone for his administration
in 2010.
A White House official
said the State of the Union
speech
themes
would
include “creating good jobs,
addressing the deficit,

above the year-ago level of 4.74 million units.
“It’s significant that home sales remain
above year-ago levels, but the market is going
through a period of swings driven by the tax
credit,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist.
“We’ll likely have another surge in the
spring as home buyers take advantage of the
extended and expanded tax credit. By early
summer the overall market should benefit
from more balanced inventory, and sales are
on track to rise again in 2010.”
First-time home buyers represented 43
percent of the market in December, compared
with 51 percent the prior month.
The industry group noted that sales had
risen every month since April, apart from a
slight dip in August, and had often topped
expectations.
For all of 2009, sales of existing homes
totaled 5.156 million, a gain of 4.9 percent
from 2008. “It was the first annual sales gain
since 2005,” NAR said. — AFP

changing Washington, and
fighting for middle class
families.”
The measures were
developed by the White
House Task Force on
Middle Class Families,
which is led by Vice
President Joseph Biden.
“There are immediate
steps we can take to reduce

the strain on family budgets
by helping middle class
families manage their child
and elder care responsibilities, save for retirement,
and pay for college,” the
White House said in a
statement.
The proposals would:
• Require companies
that do not offer retirement

plans to enroll their
employees in direct-deposit
retirement accounts unless
the workers opt out.
• Increase the “Savers
Credit,” a tax credit for
retirement savings, for
families making up to
$85,000.
• Change some of the
rules for 401K employersponsored savings accounts
to make them more transparent.
• Increase the child tax
credit rate to 35 percent of
qualifying expenses from
the current 20 percent for
families making under
$85,000 a year. Families
making up to $115,000
would be eligible for some
increase in the tax credit.
• Increase child care
funding by $1.6 billion in
2011 to serve an additional
235,000 children.
• Boost government
spending by $102.5 million
for programs aimed at helping families who provide
home care for an aging relative.
• Ease the burden for
student loans by limiting a
borrower’s payments to 10
percent of his or her
income above a basic living
allowance. — Reuters

ABU DHABI: The United Arab
Emirate’s Telecommunications
Regulatory Authority (TRA)
has launched a new competition
framework which it hopes
would lower prices of telecom
services in the Arab state,
TRA’s director general said
yesterday.
The new framework will
have the TRA study various
sectors of services offered by
mobile operators du and
Etisalat and would determine
whether any licensee has market power in each of those sectors.
“For example, if we find
there is fair competition in the
Blackberry services sector we
would then allow the operators to introduce packages
straight to the market without
being preapproved by the
TRA,” Mohamed Nasser AlGhanim said.

“This new framework will
help increase the level of competition in the market and in
turn will drive prices down, all
to benefit consumers,” he
added.
The TRA plans to have the
framework implemented by the
end of the year and is assessing
and studying the different market sectors, said Ghanim.
Ghanim downplayed the
possibility of adding a third
operator in the near future and
said it was not part of the TRA’s
plan. “This year we are giving a
draft of the telecom policy to
the cabinet and we’ll be receiving direction from the cabinet
whether to have additional
operators,” he told Reuters in
an interview.
Market penetration for
mobile phones stands at a
staggering 200 percent, he
added. — Reuters

Dubai gold trade hit by
Asian workers’ exodus
DUBAI: Laid-off South Asian workers returning home have
robbed the Dubai retail gold market of some of its keenest buyers, while sales in India have held up better, a leading Indian
executive in the trade told Reuters.
“Thousands of jobs were lost and that this directly had an
impact on the volume of gold sales in Dubai,” Vasant Mehta,
chairman of the Gem & Jewelry Export Promotion Council
based in Mumbai said in an interview. “There were so many
Indians and Pakistanis who were laid off during the economic crisis and many of these workers used to buy gold from Dubai to
send home to their families and that’s why the drop in UAE gold
sales was worse than India,” Mehta said. Jewelry sales in Dubai,
dubbed the city of gold, have continuously declined since the end
of 2008, as disposable incomes have fallen due to the global
downturn.
The repercussions of the economic crisis coupled with
Dubai’s debt saga have shaken global investors and lead to a
standstill at many of the emirate’s construction projects- reliant
on workers from the sub-continent. The sales slide continued
last year as gold hit a record high of $1,226.10 per ounce on Dec.
3, taking the precious metal further out of reach for cashstrapped consumers.
Spot gold prices reached around $1093.65 an ounce yesterday, however Mehta expects prices to dip below the $1000
mark only if India and China’s central banks decide not to buy
more reserves. “Four months ago India’s central bank bought
200 tons of gold which hyped up prices and now there are
rumors of another 200 tons order in addition to China wanting
to buy more reserves,” Mehta said. Despite a slow six months
of sales following the economic crisis, India’s retail gold sale
volumes grew by 2 percent in 2009 compared to a year earlier, said Mehta.— Reuters

22

BUSINESS

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Social, economic and geo-political issues to be analyzed

Amadeus to study ME potential
to become world’s travel hub
DUBAI: Amadeus, a global leader in technology and distribution solutions for the travel and tourism industry, yesterday announced that it has
commissioned a major new report into the potential for the Middle East to

become the world’s dominant travel hub. The report will cover the GCC
region and include assessments of the airline, travel agency and hotel sectors.

It will include interviews with senior
business figures as well as industry
bodies and government officials. It has
been commissioned by Amadeus from
the consultancy companies Insights
Management Consultancy and h2c
Consulting and will be launched in Q2.
The report will make a major review
of the current and future economic
prospects for the region to position as a
global hub. It will consider the infrastructure and technology requirements
as well as the business social, cultural
and environmental impacts. The role of
government, regulators and industry
bodies will also be examined. The
importance of the GCC region for
worldwide travel will be analyzed, particularly in comparison with other
emerging hubs such as those in Asia.
The potential for growth will also be
reviewed against the impact of the

recent economic down turn. “Asking
the question about whether the Middle
East can fulfill its potential as the
world’s most important global hub is
vital”, comments Antoine Medawar,
Vice President, Middle East & North
of Africa (MENA), at Amadeus. “We
have commissioned this report to help
bring the issues and actions into focus.
Across the region there are so many
important players involved and many
complexities to address we thought it
was important to help draw all the
threads together to enable a clear view
to be obtained. It is also particularly
timely to make this review now in light
of the impact of the economic downturn. It will help us take a fresh look.
We will be speaking to a wide range of
business and government people, but
also influencer groups like industry
associations. Do please get in touch if

Antoine Medawar

you would like to make a contribution.” ‘Amadeus’ spread in the MENA
region includes 12 local Amadeus
Commercial Organizations (ACOs)
servicing 15 countries. In the region,
Amadeus is used by some 7,400 travel
agency locations and is installed on
22,740 travel agency terminals.
Through a recent deal with the Arab
Air Carriers Organization (AACO),
Amadeus entered into a 10-year exclusive distribution agreements with 13
leading airlines from the AACO. The 13
airlines - Air Algerie, Afriqiyah Airways,
EgyptAir, Etihad Airways, Kuwait
Airways, Libyan Airlines, Qatar Airways,
Saudi Arabian Airlines, Sudan Airways,
Syrian Arab Airlines, Tunisair Yemen
Airways and Royal Air Maroc, account for
68 per cent of reservations made by travel agencies in the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA) region.

Saudi’s Dar Al-Arkan to
spend $720m in 2010
DUBAI: Saudi Arabia’s Dar al-Arkan Real Estate will use the
proceeds of an Islamic bond issue to help finance 2.7 billion riyals
of ($720 million) capital expenditure during 2010, a prospectus
for investors showed yesterday.
“Management expects Dar to make a total of 2.7 billion riyals
of capital expenditures during 2010 principally related to development of the Al-Qasr and Shams Ar-Riyadh masterplanned
communities,” the prospectus said.
Dar moved its international roadshow to the United Arab
Emirates yesterday as it looks to drum up investor interest
across the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the United States.
“Dar Al Arkan intends to fund its capital expenditures with a
combination of cash from operations, current debt facilities and
the proceeds from the offering of the certificates pursuant to this
Offering Memorandum,” the document obtained by Reuters said.
Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Unicorn Investment
Bank are arranging the sale. Dar operates in speculative, cyclical,
and capital-intensive land development and homebuilding activities, and in the still-opaque and immature Saudi housing market,
ratings agency said on Jan 20. It assigned a BB- long-term rating
to Dar Al Arkan and for the benchmark sukuk.
“I think (it will be between) half a billion and a billion (dollars),” Alain Marckus head of sukuk, credit trading treasury at
Noor Islamic Bank said on the sidelines of the roadshow in Dubai
yesterday. “The appetite is there and people will be interested in
Saudi paper... the market is losing its appetite for sukuk generally in Dubai so that might help them a little,” he said.
A second banker attending the meeting also said the issue
could be worth about $1 billion. As of Dec 2009 Arkan’s land bank
consisted of 8.9 billion riyals of undeveloped land and 4.5 billion
riyals of developed land, the prospectus said. — Reuters

KU students visit VIVA
KUWAIT: Kuwait’s leading
mobile telecommunications
provider VIVA extended a
warm welcome to the students
of
the
Kuwait
University’s
Faculty
of
Administrative Science in
the
Department
of
Quantitative Methods and
Information Systems. Under
the supervision of the
University’s associate professor Dr Kamal Rouwaibeh,
who initiated and organized
the visit, students were
given the opportunity to visit

VIVA’s Head Quarters located in Salmiya.
Upon arrival students
were received by VIVA’s
Public
Relations
and
Communication Department,
then taken on a tour of the
company’s IT servers and
offices. Explanations were
then given on how VIVA’s
exclusive products and services are their prime strategy
used to overcome competitors. Following the tour, the
Team from the Department
of Information Technology

explained the establishment
of their division including its
specializations and the number of staff to students’ ratio.
The team also spoke of the
role technology and information systems play in supporting the VIVA’s strategy. They
highlighted some of the tasks
the Information sector is
responsible for in promoting
VIVA’s strategy and how
they provide information
systems used to support the
various procedures VIVA
depends on.

NEW DELHI: Dr Shashi Tharoor presents the award to Seetharaman during the ceremony at the Le-Meridian Hotel in New Delhi.

R Seetharaman honored with
lifetime achievement award
Award presented by Indian minister Tharoor
R Seetharaman, the CEO of Doha
Bank was honored on 9th January
2010
with
a
Lifetime
Achievement Award 2009 for his
outstanding contributions and
achievements in the Banking
Sector and for contributing to
Indo Arab Trade Investment
Banking, as a philanthropist and a
dignified citizen of India. The
award was given during the
Pravasi Samman Divas 2010,
organized by the NRI Institute.
Dr Shashi Tharoor the Indian
Minister of State for External
Affairs presented the award during the ceremony at the LeMeridian Hotel in New Delhi.
Seetharaman is also one of
the most sought after Economist
in the GCC region committed to
knowledge sharing. On a regular
basis, he is called on by CNBC,
BBC World, Reuters, Forbes,
Dow Jones, Bloomberg etc., and a
host of regional media channels
for sharing his opinion and for
seeking his expert comments on
recent developments and issues
in economics, banking, environment etc.
Seetharaman is highly committed to social causes such as

CH2M enters Saudi Arabia through Olayan venture
RIYADH: Engineering giant CH2M Hill
has teamed up with Saudi Olayan Group
to bid for a growing number of building
projects in the country, whose government is spending $400 billion in five
years to meet the needs of its rising population.
Colorado-based CH2M Hill hopes that
its partnership with one of Saudi Arabia’s
oldest conglomerates, owned by the billionaire Olayan family, will help it to win
some of the projects, such as water

desalination and power plants, said Lee
McIntire, the US firm’s chief executive.
Major international firms often need
to team up with influential Saudi-owned
firms to make a foray into the kingdom,
the Arab world’s biggest economy and
OPEC’s most influential member state.
“We need to be local. It is very much
in our strategic interest. The timing is
good,” McIntire told reporters on the
sidelines of a business conference in
Riyadh. “Projects are getting bigger and

bigger...in Saudi Arabia.”
Because it has a rapidly growing population, authorities in the desert kingdom have been stepping up spending and
involving private sector partners in
building integrated water desalination
and power generation plants.
The country’s state-controlled
power utility Saudi Electricity Co plans
to spend 300 billion riyals ($80 billion)
to add a total of 20,000 megawatts
through 2018. Olayan Group’s

Chairman Khaled Olayan, who also
chairs HSBC’s Saudi affiliate SABB
bank said the joint-venture called
CH2MOlayan would start off with a
paid-up capital of 10 million riyals which
($2.7 million) could be increased later.
“It will bring expertise, transfer knowledge...and execute large projects on
time and at competitive costs,” Olayan
said. CH2MOlayan is already eyeing a
paint plant Dutch Akzo Nobel plans for
Saudi Arabia, McIntire said. — Reuters

environmental protection. He has
organized a series of environmental seminars across the globe
on “Global warming and Climatic
challenges” creating awareness
about the subject and the steps
every corporate and individuals
in society needs to take to conserve the ecological balances.
These efforts have been very
well appreciated by society, corporate houses and government
dignitaries.
Seetharaman is phenomenal
Banker, A Chartered Accountant
by qualification, Seetharaman has
more than twenty five years of
experience in banking, information technology and consultancy.
He is accredited with transforming Doha Bank into the best performing bank in the region and
sustaining the position over the
last 7 years. During his stewardship, the bank has become an
extremely vibrant entity with a
sustainable performance.
A banker par excellence and a
highly sought after economist,
Seetharaman was conferred “The
Phenomenal Banker Achievers
Excellence Award” in April 2009,
selected as the ‘Banker of the

year’ in 2007 and also conferred
the ‘Best CEO in Middle-East
Banking Industry” title in 2008,
alongside many prestigious
awards for his contribution to the
world of banking. He was also
conferred
with
“Gullands
Excellence Award 2008 for
Excellence in Banking” by the
UK Chapter of NRI Institute
World-wide
and
“Brand
Leadership Award” during the
17th Asia Brand Congress both in
September 2008; “Best CEO in
Middle East Banking Industry
2008” conferred by Dominique de
Villepin, Former Prime Minister
of France, during the 5th Leading
CEO Summit in recognition of his
valuable contributions to the
Banking industry in the Middle
East, in March 2008; “Certificate
of Appreciation” from the USACommercial Services attached to
USA Government - Commerce
Ministry in November 2007 for
his tireless efforts and outstanding creativity in promoting USQatari trade and financial ties;
and “Arab Asian Banker
Excellence Award - 2006” at the
Annual Arab Asian Forum in
Singapore in September 2006.

Jazeera Airways completes $105m
ECA financing with NATIXIS
Airline to possess 3 Airbus A320 aircraft
KUWAIT: Kuwait based regional carrier
Jazeera Airways yesterday announced that it
has taken delivery of its 11th aircraft and completed total ECA financing for $105 million
with NATIXIS for three Airbus A320 aircraft.
Jazeera Airways CFO Barathan Pasupathi
said, “We have once again proven that we can
secure funding in a relatively difficult credit
climate. The Investment community and
financial institutions continue to show confidence in our business model and Jazeera’s
ability to deliver sustainable results. We are
indeed pleased to secure backing from the
European Export Credit Agencies and to see
NATIXIS participate in this funding arrangement.”
Natixis Transport Finance SVP Jean-

Francois Lascombe said “Natixis has supported the Jazeera project with PDP financing one
year after its creation, and we have continuously done financing through commercial
loans for Jazeera Airways, which is a project
that we believe in. We thank Jazeera for having
selected us for funding the Export credit for
these three aircraft and it is a tribute to the
long standing relationship between our two
firms. “Jazeera Airways is listed on the
Kuwait Stock Exchange and operates a fleet of
11 Airbus A320s from Kuwait and to destinations across the Middle East, Iran, and North
Africa. The airline has firm orders for another
29 additional aircraft, to be delivered over the
coming years with the last fleet installment
scheduled for delivery in 2016.

GM Chairman Whitacre Jr
to become permanent CEO
New ways of global cooperation
By Klaus Schwab

T

he economic and financial crisis of the
past year underscored the extent to
which, after experiencing the ‘globalization of opportunities’, we are now facing the
‘globalization of problems.’ This shift reflects
the transformation of a world which has
become much more interconnected, interdependent and complex, characterized by many
new state and non-state players.
Today, although the impact of the crisis
appears to be diminishing, an atmosphere of
complacency has descended, even as the
recovery process remains fragile. The momentum calling for comprehensive reforms has
slowed and the compulsion for international
cooperation has weakened, as demonstrated
recently in Copenhagen.
As we continue to absorb lessons from the
crisis, it is clear that this year will be an
exceedingly challenging one. The fiscal and
monetary prescriptions to ease the pain of
global economic shocks are now fuelling anxieties about the creation of new economic bubbles.
Moreover, the demographic, behavioral and
technological changes linked to the collapse in
global demand, combined with the persistent
overcapacity in many industries, are challenging basic assumptions about the nascent recovery. In addition, global risks such as climate
change, nuclear proliferation and pandemics
have reached unprecedented heights of
urgency.
If we focus solely on crisis management, we
will continue to fuel the downward spiral.
Denial of unpleasant or politically inconvenient
truths, combined with the herd instinct, is what
has caused us to rely on systems which were
unrealistic and unsustainable in the first place.
Clearly, moments of crises create moments of
opportunity to introduce better ideas and to
inject positive change in the global system,
drawing on the engagement of all stakeholders
of global society.
It is clear that 2010 represents a tipping
point in global history, and that the management of our future requires us above all to do it
in the framework of rethinking our values,
redesigning our systems and rebuilding our
institutions.
One of the fundamental preconditions in
rethinking our values framework should not
only be anchored on social responsibility and
environmental sustainability, but also on
increased equity. Rethinking our values pro-

vides the foundation for the necessary redesign
of our systems, adapting them to the needs of
society in the 21st century. This redesign must
take place on all levels, but particularly on the
global level, comprising the necessary framework, for example, for global financial and trade
flows. These redesign efforts require a common vision, collaborative innovation and publicprivate partnerships for their long-term success.
Rethinking our values and redesigning our
systems naturally leads to the rebuilding of our
institutions - to make them more proactive and
strategic; more inclusive, fostering greater
multi-stakeholder engagement; more reflective
of the new geo-political and geo-economic
structures; and more inclusive of inter-generational accountability and responsibility.
The bricks we are using to build the postcrisis world can be found in new concepts
which are based on greater citizen involvement
and stronger government partnerships with
other non-state actors. We have to incorporate
much more expertise and knowledge into our
global decision-making processes; we have to
use social networking as an empowerment tool
and more effectively harness our digital capital;
we have to listen more intensively to the next
generation.
While there are many existing institutions
that are well-placed to look at discrete aspects
of the challenges facing the world, none have
the mandate to examine the global situation in
an integrated and holistic manner, nor do they
have the range of stakeholders and constituencies that would enable them to perform such a
task adequately.
It is clear that what the world needs most
today is integration and cooperation. We will
never meet the challenges if we do it alone. We
must reach beyond our own silos, building links
with other people and organizations. The basis
of any progress made in the complex and fast
moving world of the 21st century is the capability to understand the motivations of all the
different stakeholders of society and to gain
true insights into the nature of the issues. This
can only be achieved through dialogue amongst
those who have responsibility for shaping the
global agenda. Such a discourse is the precondition for sound and enlightened decision-making. To provide the platform for such a comprehensive and authentic dialogue is the unique
contribution which Davos - at the beginning of
each year - can make to the world. — Klaus
Schwab is founder and Executive
Chairman, World Economic Forum

DETROIT: General Motors’s
chairman and interim chief
executive, Ed Whitacre Jr, will
become the permanent CEO
of the automaker, a person
briefed on the matter said yesterday.
The announcement was
made at 11:30 am Eastern
(1630 GMT) news conference
yesterday at GM’s downtown
Detroit headquarters, the person said.
The person, who asked not
to be identified because the
announcement had not been
made, said Whitacre will say
that he is taking the job for
good, as well as give an update
on GM’s business plan.
Whitacre, 68, is a former
CEO of telecommunications
giant AT&T Inc. He has been
serving as interim CEO since
the board ousted former CEO
Fritz Henderson on Dec. 1.
GM had hired a firm to conduct a global search for a suc-

cessor. Whitacre often says
in a folksy Texas drawl that
he knows little about cars.
But he has already shaken up
the company by hiring a new
chief financial officer and
transferring the old one to
China, firing the Chevrolet
and Buick-GMC brand managers, combining sales and
marketing and consolidating
control of GM’s core North
American market under one
executive.
He also seems impatient to
spur the plodding culture of
GM, where decision by committee, an isolated upper
management and fear of risk
produced mediocre cars for
years.
He wants to increase GM’s
sales and market share while
shifting the company’s focus
from trucks to cars. And he
aims to repay $8.1 billion in
US and Canadian government
loans by the end of June. —AP

DETROIT: General Motors Corp Chairman Edward Whitacre Jr addresses the
media during a news conference at the company’s headquarters in Detroit. —AP

Midas Furniture opens first
KSA showroom in Riyadh
RIYADH: Following the tremendous
success experienced in Kuwait and
Jordan, Midas Furniture hosted the
grand opening of a new 10,000 m2
showroom in Riyadh, KSA. The auspicious event was co-hosted by
Midas
Chairman,
Khaldoun
Alkhammach and Vice Chairman &
Managing Director, Hassan Bibi,
along with an impressive list of distinguished guests.
Russell Brown, Director of Retail
Operations, commented, “The stunning new showroom is a result of a
team effort aligned with our strategic
vision for the Midas brand, which
takes us closer to fulfilling our
goals.”
Further adding to this vision,
“Striving for excellence is paramount in everything we do, where
we collaborate with all our partners
around the world to constantly provide our customers with innovative
styles at the highest quality at reasonable prices. Our showrooms
reflect our understanding and interpretation of our customers’ discern-

ing tastes and high expectations. The
showroom’s contemporary design
and warmth provides customers with
a shopping experience to feel as if
they were in their own homes.
Customers will experience an
enriched shopping environment with
space, clarity of dÈcor and lighting
that sets the right mood and atmosphere.”
He continued, “Our diverse and
exquisite range culminates in our
understanding and appreciation of
our customer’s individuality and we
constantly strive to meet the expectations of those in pursuit of elegance. The showroom offers in
excess of 10,000 m2 of display space
split over two floors with basement
parking reserved exclusively for
Midas customers. The ground floor
carries our contemporary range of
home furniture and accessories with
classical furniture located on the first
floor. Office furniture and the Special
Projects Department are located on
the second floor. Additional departments on display include kitchen-

ware, chandeliers and lighting, carpets, flowers, children’s rooms and a
Midas Cafe.”
Brown explained, “Midas employs
a highly talented and truly international team of interior designers
from across the globe to showcase
their innovative and harmonious creations to ensure customers enjoy a
seamless and uncomplicated selection process. An example of the coordinated themes our team has created
are “Rock Star”, “Africa”, “Fusion”,
“Metropolis” and “Ibiza” amongst
other eye catching styles. He continued, “What makes Midas different is
the bond that is formed between us
and our customers, based on mutual
respect for core values and understanding the increasing demands and
high standards pertaining to elegance, sheer beauty and exceptional
value.”
Relating to the selection of KSA
as Midas’ new point of expansion,
Brown explained, “The Saudi market
is of strategic importance to us and
this step was a natural progression in

our expansion path after experiencing phenomenal success in other
markets. Research has indicated that
the KSA market is growing as a
result of ever increasing high standards of living, a surge in population
and a booming real estate sector.
With this in mind, an additional
Midas showroom in Alkhobar is
under construction with a target
opening date in October of this year.
We are also currently in serious
negotiations to secure a strategic
location for our Jeddah branch.
Midas Furniture, proud of its first
showroom opening in Saudi Arabia,
was first launched in Kuwait in 1994
and was encouraged to expand into
Jordan, UAE and Qatar after achieving market leader position within a
relatively short period of time.
Midas Furniture, which is
“Superbrand Certified”, attributes
its success to a clear strategic vision
and a powerful relationship with its
customers, which is built on trust
and a serious commitment to service
excellence.

Oil declines towards $74,
close to one-month low

Oman Air pledges support
for maritime project
Oman relives its sailing glory days
MUSCAT: Oman Air lends support to the prestigious maritime
project - Jewel of Muscat, reaffirming its commitment to the
Sultanate’s initiative in upholding a
glorious past tradition. As a major
sponsor of the project, Oman Air is
providing air travel and freight.
Jewel of Muscat, an 18-metre
long reconstructed ninth century
sewn-plank ship modelled on the
wreckage of the old Chinese Tang
dynasty treasure ship which sank
in the Indian Ocean while carrying
precious items, will set sail from
the port of Muscat next month,
heading for Singapore, with Omani
sailors aboard.
Jewel of Muscat will travel
along the same trade routes across
the Indian Ocean as those
described by Arab geographers
and navigators. Once in Singapore,
she will be officially handed over as
a gift from the Government of
Oman
to
the
Singapore
Government and housed in a
museum along with the treasure
from the original wreck.
A spokesperson from Oman

Air’s Corporate Communications
and Media official stated that
Oman Air is proud to be supporting this venture. Through its commitment to respecting Oman’s
heritage while building Oman’s
ties across the Indian Ocean, the
Jewel of Muscat project captures
the spirit driving Oman Air’s ambitious plans for the future. The idea
of this was inspired from the Tang
Treasure that was discovered in
1998 in Indonesian waters. It took
about 12 months to construct this
vessel, which represents an
important Omani cultural and heritage initiative, it was informed.
“It was necessary for Oman Air
to support this project to keep history alive, furthermore bring both
the nations closer. A large part of
Oman’s history is interwoven with
the sea,” the official said. Jewel of
Muscat, a type of ship that traded
between China and Oman more
than 1,000 years ago will undeniably reignite international interest
in Oman’s long maritime heritage
and emulate the enchanted feats of
one of the country’s most

renowned mariners, the legendary
Sinbad. “Oman, which has a long
and proud history that extends
back to the earliest of civilizations,
left its mark on history as a nation
of traders and explorers,” the
spokesperson concluded saying.
It is worthwhile to mention
that Sohar, a replica of a ninth-century Arab dhow that was built in
Oman too, sailed from Muscat and
arrived in the China in early July
1981, at the end of a 9,600 kilometers voyage. The point of the voyage was to prove that Sindbad’s
legendary voyages are rooted in
historical fact - and they certainly
proved that the voyage itself is
possible. In a hand-built craft
stitched together with coconut
string, and navigating with
medieval navigational instruments, the dhow sailed between
Muscat and Canton. Named after
the legendary Omani sailor
Sindbad who explored the seas in
ancient times, Oman Air’s
Frequent Flyer Program symbolizes the rich and rewarding seafaring history of Oman.

LONDON: Oil prices slipped
slightly towards $74 a barrel
yesterday, nearing a one-month
low, after a US proposal to
toughen bank trading rules and
on continuing signs of weak
demand.
Prices have fallen by almost
$10 a barrel over the last two
weeks since hitting a 15-month
peak of $83.95 on Jan 11. US
crude for March delivery rose
25 cents to $74.29 a barrel by
1403 GMT. The contract fell
$1.54 to settle at $74.54 a barrel
on Friday, the lowest settlement since Dec 22, after trading
as low as $74.01.
London ICE Brent fell 8
cents to $72.75. “It is very narrow trading today. You could
call it consolidation after last
week’s fall,” VTB Capital analyst Andrey Krynchenkov said.
“It is quiet ahead of the US
Federal Reserve announcement
on
interest
rates
on
Wednesday,” he added.
Wall Street stocks had their

worst three-day slide in 10
months at the end of last week
on fears President Barack
Obama’s plan to limit risk-taking by banks would undermine
profits, but US stock index
futures pointed to a possible
rebound yesterday.
“Besides raising concerns
that the new ruling could threaten the profitability of the financial sector, Obama’s plan also
raised worries concerning liquidity in commodity markets,”
JBC Energy analyst David Wech
said. Oil prices have broken
below the 100-day moving average around $75.25, a key indicator of market sentiment which
measures the average price of
oil over the last three months.
Demand for oil remains relatively weak in the wake of the
financial crisis.
US crude oil is expected to
rise to an average of $77.50 a
barrel in 2010, a Reuters poll of
29 market analysts showed yesterday. —Reuters

Bank Muscat plunges to
Q4 loss on impairments
DUBAI: Writedowns on a stake in a Pakistan bank and higher
loan impairments plunged Bank Muscat into a fourth-quarter net
loss of 6.7 million Omani rials ($17.4 million) yesterday.
The loss at Oman’s largest bank by market value compared
with a profit of 3.62 million a year earlier, according to Reuters
calculations, and fell short of expectations. Shares in the bank,
which analysts forecast would have a net profit of 2.69 million
rials, ended up 0.5 percent, roughly in line with the Muscat index.
Bank Muscat said in November it would have to write down
the value of its investment in Pakistan’s Silkbank. The Omani
bank held a 35 percent stake in Silkbank but decided not to take
part in its rights issue, leading to a writedown of 20.3 million rials
and cutting its stake to 8.5 percent.
The bank reported a full-year net profit of 73.7 million, down
21 percent from 93.7 million rials in 2008. Its results were also hit
by impairment charge on loan losses of 98.2 million rials for the
entire year, a more than fourfold increase compared with the previous year. —Reuters

COLORADO: The Halliburton sign adorns the side of a machine being used by
the company at a site for natural-gas producer Williams in Rulison, Colorado.
Halliburton said yesterday its fourth-quarter profit tumbled 48 percent to end
a volatile year and the oilfield service company said it expects 2010 to be a
transitional year for the industry. —AP

Halliburton’s Q4
profit drops 48%
HOUSTON: Halliburton yesterday reported its fourth-quarter
profit tumbled 48 percent to end
a volatile year and the oilfield
services company said that it
expects 2010 to be a transitional
year for the industry. Oil services companies, which assist
producers with drilling, reservoir management and other services, struggled in 2009 as consumers burned less fuel. Crude
collapsed to less than half of its
current price as millions of
American workers received pink
slips and left their cars at home.
As a result, major oil producers pressured companies like
Halliburton Co, and rivals like

Schlumberger Ltd., to cut their
fees.
Energy prices have roared
back and the number of operating rigs in the US is on the rise,
which could give Halliburton
more leverage on prices in coming months. “Many operators
have announced potential
increases in upstream spending
for 2010 targeted for new frontier developments and ultradeepwater where we are well
positioned,” said CEO Dave
Lesar.
Still, Lesar said, substantial
spending may not be seen until
the latter half of 2010. The
Houston company yesterday

reported net income of $243 million, or 27 cents per share, for
the fourth quarter. That compares with income of $468 million, or 52 cents per share, for
the final three months of 2008.
Revenue fell 25 percent, to
$3.69 billion.
Analysts
polled
by
Thomson Reuters expected
earnings of 27 cents per share
on revenue of $3.63 billion.
For the full year, Halliburton
Co. posted net income of $1.15
billion, or $1.27 per share,
compared with $2.22 billion, or
$2.45 per share for 2008.
Shares fell 50 cents to $30.65
in premarket trading. —AP

24

BUSINESS
GLOBAL DAILY MARKET REPORT

MIDEAST STOCK MARKETS

KSE stocks pare losses
KUWAIT: The Kuwait Stock
Exchange (KSE) along with GCC
stock markets ended yesterday’s trading
session
in
the
green.
Furthermore, major indicators also
ended on a positive note backed by
gains witnessed in a majority of the
market’s sectors. The KSE was affected by regional markets Sunday which
fell on Barack Obama’s bank plan and
yesterday there was a recovery of
these losses.
Global General Index (GGI) added
1.08 points (+0.59 percent) during
yesterday’s session to reach 184.33
points. Furthermore, the KSE Price
Index increased by 59.50 points
(+0.85 percent) yesterday and closed
at 7,084 points. Market capitalization
was up KD176.01mn today to reach
KD30.09bn.
Market breadth
During the session, 127 companies
were traded. Market breadth was
skewed towards gainers as 60 equities
advanced versus 27 that retreated. A
total of 118 stocks remained
unchanged during the trading session.
Trading activities ended on a positive
note today as volume of shares traded
on the exchange increased by 51.02
percent to reach 651.05mn shares.
Furthermore, value of shares traded
gained by 22.06 percent to stand at
KD68.22mn. The Investment Sector
was the volume leader for the day,
accounting for 35.71 percent of total
shares traded. The same sector was
also the value leader, accounting for
32.49 percent of total market value.
International Financial Advisors saw
60.30mn shares changing hands at a
total traded value of KD6.50mn, making it the volume and value leader yesterday.
In terms of top gainers, Aref
Investment Group was the top gainer
in the market, adding 8.62 percent and
closed at KD0.126. On the other hand,
Al-Abraj Holding Company was the
biggest decliner for the day, dropping
by 5.77 percent and closed at
KD0.025.
Regarding
Global’s
sectoral
indices, they all ended on a positive

note, except for Global Insurance
Index which was unchanged and
Global Non-Kuwaiti Index which was
the only decliner. The index ended
the day down 0.28 percent backed by
Ahli United Bank being the only
decliner in the sector. The scrip
ended the day down 1.30 percent and
closed at KD0.152. It’s worth to
mention that Sharjah Cement &
Industrial Development Company
was the only gainer in the sector
(+1.64 percent) and remaining companies were unchanged.
In terms of gainers, Global
Industrial Index took the top spot, up
1.18 percent. Kuwait Cement
Company was a contributing factor to
the index’s gain by posting a 3.51
percent increase to close at KD0.590.
Also noteworthy is Equipment
Holding Company, which was the

second biggest gainer in the market.
The scrip ended yesterday’s trading
session with a 7.35 percent increase
in value and closed at KD0.073.
Global Investment Index was the
second biggest advancers with a 1.10
percent gain. International Financial
Advisors aided the index by posting a
3.77 percent increased and closed at
KD0.110. Furthermore, Global
Investment House also ended in the
green yesterday by posting a 6.25
percent gain to close at KD0.085.
Global’s special indices also
ended on a positive note yesterday
with Global Islamic Index being the
top gainer. The index ended the day
up 1.09 percent backed by heavyweight Kuwait Finance House ended
the day up 1.89 percent.
The price of OPEC basket of
twelve crudes stood at $73.02 a bar-

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

rel on Friday 22/1/2010, compared
with $74.54 the previous day,
according to OPEC Secretariat calculations.
Kuwait Finance House said in a
filing it had obtained a license from
the Saudi Capital Market Authority,
to operate in the Kingdom through
its unit, Saudi Kuwait Finance
House. The Kuwaiti lender will
undertake securities underwriting,
management and arrangement, as
well as provide depository and financial advisory services in Saudi
Arabia. Kuwaiti Akhawat Real Estate
Company was established with a capital totaling KD1mn, Kuwaiti newspaper “Kuwait Al-Yawm” said yesterday. The newspaper said in its latest edition that the company is a
closed joint stock company with
10mn in stocks valuing 100fils each.

Dubai leads regional
rebound, Asia backs
DUBAI: Middle East markets rebounded yesterday after a steady opening in Asia soothed
nerves, with most Gulf indexes clawing back
after a sell-off in the previous day inspired by
Obama’s bank plan.
Dubai was the standout performer, climbing 2.8 percent in its biggest gain for three
weeks, while the six other Gulf Arab benchmarks added less than a percent. Egypt’s
bourse was closed for a holiday.
“The severity of yesterday’s correction
was a mystery and so the market is bouncing
back from that,” said Ali Khan, managing
director and head of brokerage at Arqaam
Capital. “The declines out of Asia today are
not as severe as we would have expected
given the fall on US markets on Friday and
that’s brought a comfort factor to our region.”
On Thursday, US President Barack Obama
announced plans to curb U.S. banks’ proprietary trading, sending stock markets across
the globe lower and adding to rising jitters
over the health of the world economy.
“Obama’s plan is likely to impact the major
US banks and the whole global financial sector, while the Gulf could follow suit and introduce similar rules,” said Shailendra Singh,
investment manager at Al-Shurooq Securities
in Muscat.
“In the long-term, Obama’s move will be
positive for investors-banks would focus on
their core business and there would be more
stability in the market.”
In the short-term, most analysts remain
cautious, forecasting more range-bound trading on regional bourses, while Dubai
Holding’s spat with Standard & Poors will do
little to boost confidence in UAE stocks.
“It’s hard to see what positive catalysts
might be out there,” said Robert McKinnon,
ASAS Capital chief investment officer. “So I
think markets will move sideways to down
over the next three months at least. I don’t
see positive catalysts coming from earnings
or from global markets.”
DP World, part of debt-laden Dubai World,
rose 3.9 percent after the ports operator
issued a trading update and said it would list
on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in the
second-quarter of this year. “We have been
calling a buy on DP World-volumes in the

second half of 2009 were up versus the first
half and it seems like the company has turned
a corner,” said Arqaam’s Khan.
“DP World is a good proxy to recovering
world trade and that theme is manifesting
itself in rising container volumes, which are
now back to almost pre-crisis levels. The
London listing will substantially increase the
company’s profile.”
In Saudi, chemical company Saudi Basic
Industries Corp (SABIC) rose 0.6 percent,
lifting the region’s index.
“Oil has made quite a significant move
downwards without much support - if it gets
closer to $70, there will be an effect on the
(Saudi) market because everything always
comes back to petrochemicals,” said a
Riyadh-based analyst who asked not to be
identified.
“A lot of international investors play
SABIC as a proxy for a global economic
recovery and if that isn’t happening, then people will sell the stock.”
Oil is down 0.1 percent at $74.46 a barrel
at 1326 GMT and has fallen more than 10 percent in the past two weeks as worries over
the global economy weigh.
HIGHLIGHTS
DUBAI
The index rose 2.8 percent to 1,614 points.
Emaar Properties climbed 5.7 percent.
ABU DHABI
The benchmark climbed 0.3 percent to
2,608 points, rebounding from a six-week
intraday low.
SAUDI ARABIA
The measure rose 0.2 percent to 6,316
points.
OMAN
The index climbed 0.6 percent to 6,406
points.
KUWAIT
The index rose 0.9 percent to 7,084 points,
its highest close since Dec. 27 and biggest
gain for three weeks.
QATAR
The measure climbed 0.7 percent to 6,710
points.
BAHRAIN
The index rose 0.2 percent to 1,474
points. —Reuters

BUSINESS

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

25

Resurgent NAFED-India blazes the trail
NEW DELHI: India’s agri-business major,
National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing
Federation of India (NAFED), has come out
with a Republic Day bonanza to cheer up the
expatriate Indians and the common man in
India. NAFED’s Santa Claus-kitty includes
essential commodities and kitchen basics to
the consumers at affordable price and
NAFED-brand Indian products to the expatriates in GCC countries.
Launching the concept of ‘Easy Market’,
which ensures quality kitchen basics to the
people at 30% less than the market price,
NAFED’s initiatives give a boost and relief
to the consumers at a time when the prices
tend to show an unprecedented upward
trend. The Easy Market Scheme envisages
distribution of 100 million easy kits consisting of 16 essential items including rice,
wheat flour, edible oil, pulses, sugar and an
assortment of other commodities selected
by an expert team of nutrition specialists
and consumer representatives. ‘Easy kits’
have been distributed on a trial basis in New
Delhi and Kochi. The consumer feedback
has been overwhelming. “The Easy Market
is NAFED’s simple solution to the complex
problem of spiraling prices and we expect to
extend it to all parts of India in a phased
manner”, said Dr C V Ananda Bose,
Additional Agriculture Secretary to the
Government of India and Chief Executive of
NAFED.

In an emergency meeting of the Cabinet
Committee on prices chaired by the Prime
Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, it has been
decided to entrust NAFED with the task of
distributing rice, wheat flour, edible oil and
pulses throughout the country with considerable subsidy from the Government of
India.The Prime Minister has convened a
meeting of all the Chief Ministers on 27th
January, 2010 closely after the Republic Day
celebrations. India expects momentous
decisions from this conclave which will mitigate the sufferings of the common man in
the wake of unprecedented price rise.
One of the thrust areas of NAFED is to
export to the GCC countries NAFED brand
Indian agro based products and processed
food on a regular basis. Similarly, products
from GCC countries will be imported to
India by NAFED.
National Agricultural Cooperative
Marketing Federation of India Limited
(NAFED), an apex organization of marketing cooperatives in India, was set up on 2nd
October, 1958 with the prime objective of
providing marketing support to the farmers
to help them fetch reasonable price for their
products.
Apart from discharging its obligations
with regard to implementation of
Government sponsored schemes, NAFED
also undertakes business activities in the
domestic and international market.

Recently, NAFED has undertaken certain activities such as organic farming on a
larger scale under the National Horticulture
Mission in the States of UP, Punjab, Bihar
and Kerala. NAFED has mobilized farmers
for the adoption of organic farming and certification thereafter. The produce obtained
from these organically converted fields
would be better in nutritive value and also
would fetch higher market price than other
produce being produced with excessive use
of chemical fertilizer and insecticides.
NAFED has also increased its activities
to a great extent in the field of production
and supply of seeds. NAFED has been designated as one of the agencies under the
Government’s flagship project for increasing the production and productivity of
oilseeds and pulses.
NAFED is also venturing into the production and distribution of bio-fertilizers,
bio-compost and other organic fertilizers, as
there is great demand of these fertilizers
from various state government agencies and
farmers. NAFED has entered into a backto-back arrangement for providing qualityplanting material of fruit plants and bulbs for
flowering plants to the various State
Government agencies through its associates.
NAFED has also started working on
increasing the profitability in the traditional
and core business activities by collecting

Dr C V Ananda Bose
better market intelligence through various
commodity exchanges and better operational management to reduce the administrative and carry over cost. NAFED has initiated steps for proper management of its
cold storages and warehouses to reduce the
idle time of these units. NAFED has also
constructed new cold storages and warehouses, as there is a wide gap between
demand and availability of this infrastructure
and it could be a profitable activity.
In its new Road Map, NAFED envisages

expansion of its business activities including
export-import of food grains, sugar, tea, and
processed food items. NAFED also seeks to
expand its business operations for procurement of paddy wheat, pulses, mustard seed,
edible oil and other agricultural commodities. Following core areas will be the focus of
business expansion activities of NAFED: (i) Outright Domestic Trading Business
of suitable agricultural commodities such as
- Rice, Wheat, Pulses, Mustard Seed,
Soyabean, Onion, Potato, Cotton, Spices etc.
(ii) Import and Export business of
selected agricultural commodities with careful application of market intelligence.
(iii) Futures trading in selected agricultural commodities with advantageous hedging such as, Rubber, Spices, Soyabean, Guar,
Potato, Pulses etc.
(iv) Trading on National Electronic Spot
Exchange platform under the contracts confirming to NAFED’s FAQ standards for
which five branches of NAFED have already
availed membership from NSEL.
(v) Participation in the business activities of private retail supply chain, supplies
to Food Processing Industries/ Aurvedic
Pharmaceuticals etc. to maximize business
volumes.
(vi) Expansion of programme of certified seed production and supply of certified/hybrid seeds and planting materials to
the Governmental/ non-Governmental

Agencies.
(vii) Expansion of PSS activities on
behalf of FCI/State Governments with
respect to other commodities for which
NAFED is not a designated central agency
of the Government.
(viii) Implementation of Government
sponsored schemes and programs under
National Horticulture Mission (NHM) and
Rashtirya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) in
various States such as, Organic Adoption
and Certification Programs taken up in
Punjab, UP and Bihar.
(ix) Expansion of business relating to
supply of fertilizers, bio-fertilizers, agricultural implements and machinery, pesticides and other agri-inputs to the
Governmental/non-Governmental
Agencies.
The resurgence of NAFED as the prime
mover of price stabilization measures in
India has catapulted the organization on to
the centre stage of agri-marketing and consumer protection in India. NAFED is slated for a quantum jump in the background
of its positioning by Government of India
as the National Nodal Agency for price stabilization. Looking forward to “fresh
woods and pastures anew”, NAFED is
pitched for takeoff overseas with proposals
from different countries to organize agrimarketing and launch food security measures there.

Failure could up the risk of ‘double dip’ recession

Uncertainty on Bernanke
vote raises economic fears
WASHINGTON: A defeat of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s quest
for another four-year term could raise the risk of a “double dip” recession if
political jousting over a successor were to drag on for months, economists

The new Lancia Delta 200 HP is shown at the 79th Geneva International
Motor Show in Geneva, Switzerland. Chrysler now has a turnaround plan
that promises improved quality and a stream of new models. — AP

Revamped brands are key
to Chrysler turnaround
AUBURN HILLS, Michigan: Chrysler sold more
than 118,000 Sebring sedans in 2001. Eight years
later, the automaker barely sold 27,000 as its
bankruptcy filing sent customers fleeing to the
car’s newer, better competitors. Chrysler now
has a turnaround plan that promises improved
quality and a stream of new models. But it won’t
work unless Chrysler can get cars like the
Sebring back on people’s shopping lists. To do
that, Chrysler is going back to the basics:
Reinventing its car brands - Chrysler as a luxury
line, Dodge as a quirky value brand — and reintroducing them with head-turning ads. It’s a tall
order, but Chrysler insists it can be done. “We’ve
had troubles. Yeah. We saw death. But the whole
world needs to realize we’re serious about this
plan,” Dodge brand chief Ralph Gilles told The
Associated Press in a recent interview. “We’re no
dummies. We know what a good car is and what a
good car isn’t.” Chrysler’s truck brands, Jeep and
Ram, have strong identities in buyers’ minds. But
its car brands are mushy, said Allen Adamson of
the San Francisco-based branding firm Landor
Associates. One of Chrysler’s first actions under
Fiat SpA, which took control of the automaker
last year, was to split Ram truck from Dodge so
Dodge could stand alone.
“What they need to do is quickly define what
they want to stand for and then build on it,”
Adamson said. Dodge will try to make a big
splash with an ad during the Super Bowl next
month. Chrysler Group LLC, which has yet to
pay back $15.5 billion it borrowed from the federal government, is taking some heat for paying an
estimated $5 million to air the ad. But the company says it’s the best forum to explain Dodge’s
transformation. Most consumers identify Dodge
with its old ram’s horn logo, but Gilles wants it to
be known for cars and minivans like the Grand
Caravan, which is now the brand’s best-selling
vehicle.
Gilles, the 40-year-old son of Haitian immigrants, is the designer of two of Chrysler’s most
distinctive and popular vehicles: The Chrysler
300, reminiscent of a 1940s sedan, and the muscular 2009 Dodge Ram pickup. He said Dodge
offers innovations — like in-floor storage bins
and built-in drink coolers — at a value price. The
Grand Caravan starts at $23,995, compared to
$26,805 for a Honda Odyssey.
But he also wants Dodge to be known for the
sporty, aggressive feeling epitomized by the
Dodge Challenger sports car, which looks more at
home on the dirt roads of Hazzard County than
the parking lot of the local mall. “People buy
Challengers because they’re emotionally drawn
to them, because they make them feel good,”
Gilles said. “That’s really what I’m looking for. I
think it’s possible to have the ‘gotta have it’ thing
in every car.” Gilles said car companies generally
cast a wide net for buyers, but that leads to vanilla styling. He’s targeting “the expressive types,
who are a little bit quirky.” “I want to purposefully aim off the bull’s eye, find a concentrated group
of customers whose needs aren’t being met right
now.” The Chrysler brand, too, is aiming off the
bull’s eye, but it’s trying to lure well-educated,
sophisticated buyers. One of its first new ads,

which aired on news channels, called for the
release of Burmese human rights activist Aung
San Suu Kyi. Another in production inserts a
Chrysler 300 into a scene from “Breakfast at
Tiffany’s.” Both are stylish and provocative.
They’re the brainchild of Olivier Francois, a 48year-old Frenchman in dark Levi’s who heads the
Chrysler brand and its European twin, Fiat’s
Lancia brand. He also controls marketing for the
entire Chrysler Group. Francois, who sold music
in Taiwan and Citroens in Denmark before leading a turnaround of Lancia, sees the US market
share of Chrysler brand rising to 5 percent from
its current 2 percent. So if 95 percent of buyers
don’t understand his ads, he’s content.
“I prefer 5 percent loving it — loving my
cars, loving my colors, loving my Detroit auto
show stand, loving my advertising — then 50,
60, 70 percent saying, ‘Eh. It’s OK,”’ he said. “It
will take years, but it will give a different feeling
about the brand.” His influence was evident at
this month’s Detroit auto show, where scantily
clad models vamped next to the Fiat 500 minicar
and Lancia Delta sedan. European shows often
use models, but they’re rare at US ones.
Francois wants to bring Chrysler to the level of
Lancia, which has similarly elegant styling but
sells for a 15 percent to 20 percent premium
over Fiat. By contrast, the starting price of a
Chrysler Town and Country minivan is less than
10 percent more than a Dodge Grand Caravan.
He also wants to increase Chrysler’s international sales. Sedans like the 300 can fill holes in
Lancia’s lineup, while the Fiat 500 will join
Chrysler’s US offerings in 2011. — AP

Still,
the
chance
of
Bernanke’s defeat has unsettled
Wall Street, contributing to last
week’s 4 percent loss by the
Dow Jones industrial average, its
worst performance in 10 months.
If Bernanke were rejected,
uncertainty over a successor
would further roil global markets, at least in the short run.
Anxiety, along with sagging
investments, could cause consumers and businesses to cut
spending. Joblessness, already at
10 percent, could worsen. And
the recovery might fail.
Economists who fear a double-dip recession-in which the
recovery would collapse into
another recession-regard it as a
worst-case scenario. But they
don’t rule it out, either.
Lynn Reaser, chief economist
for the National Association for
Business Economics, is among
them. She sees the likelihood of
a double-dip as less than 50 percent. “It will become more acute
if there are delays in confirming a
successor,” she says, noting that
the economic recovery remains
fragile, with spending still weak,
credit tight and job creation
scarce. “All the political angst
over the confirmation couldn’t
have come at a worse time for
the economy,” Reaser says. A
Bernanke loss would heighten
uncertainty about Fed policies on
interest rates and stimulus
measures. In part, that’s because
Bernanke devised the unconventional supports for the economy
and likely knows how best to

safely wind them down, notes
Edward Yardeni, chief investment strategist at Yardeni
Research.
But even more worrisome for
the markets and the economy
would be if Bernanke’s Senate
foes are seen as having meddled
with the Fed’s independence for
political reasons. The dollar
would likely fall. Higher interest
rates and inflation fears would
follow, stoked by uncertainty and
shaken confidence. And all that
would probably unsettle consumers and business, making
them less likely to spend, hire or
invest.
Bernanke’s
confirmation,
which had seemed assured, was
suddenly thrown into doubt last
week as resistance grew among
some Senate Democrats. And
some senators who had supported Bernanke said they were now
undecided. The Fed chief’s term
expires Jan. 31. If Bernanke isn’t
confirmed by then, Vice
Chairman Donald Kohn is
expected to step in as chairman
and run the central bank temporarily. Bernanke is widely
credited with helping to prevent
the Great Recession from turning into a second Great
Depression. But his support of
Wall Street bailouts during the
height of the financial crisis has
angered Americans struggling
with 10 percent unemployment
and soaring home foreclosures.
Backlash from Democrats
over Bernanke’s role in the
bailouts
intensified
after

warn. But Bernanke’s prospects appeared to brighten Sunday, with three
more senators, including Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky,
predicting he’ll be confirmed. A vote is expected later this week.

WASHINGTON: US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington,
DC. — AFP
Democrats suffered a stunning
upset in the Massachusetts
Senate race. Democrats are
eager to appear allied with ordinary Americans disgusted with
Wall Street’s excesses.
Higher interest rates that
could follow a Bernanke defeat
would make it costlier for the
government to pay down its
record-high debt. Right now, low
rates are allowing the Treasury
Department to manage its debts.
If investors think the White
House and Congress will choose

a successor who would keep the
Fed pumping money into the
economy and hold interest rates
at record lows for too long, it
would erode trust in the Fed’s
oversight of the economy.
Continued low rates would
please
many
ordinary
Americans. But it would risk
creating new speculative bubbles
and stoking inflation.
Some economists say that in
long run, they most fear that
global investors would see a
rejection of Bernanke as setting

a precedent for Congress to
intrude on “monetary policy.”
That refers to the Fed’s decisions on whether and when to
adjust rates to influence economic activity, inflation and employment. The Fed’s independence
in monetary policy is vital to public confidence in the central
bank. If it’s undermined, the Fed
could lose its credibility on Wall
Street, which would fan inflation
pressures and send up interest
rates, choking the economic
rebound. — AFP

Greek farmers rally in BA cabin crew
begins strike vote
Athens for subsidies
ATHENS: Greek farmers who have blocked
highways and border crossings for nine days
marched through Athens yesterday, piling pressure on the socialist government struggling
with a financial crisis.
Hundreds of angry farmers demanding more
subsidies and higher prices for produce marched
through the streets of the capital, holding black
flags and chanting: “They are drinking our
blood, farmers fight back!” Thousands of wheat,
corn and cotton growers have caused major
transport disruption across Greece by blocking
roads with their trucks and tractors. Others
have blocked the Promahonas border crossing
with Bulgaria and the railway, ignoring appeals
by Greek businesses and complaints from Sofia.
The farmers’ protest is seen as the first test
for the ruling socialists, who need to impose
tough austerity measures but face unions’ opposition. If the government stands its ground in
negotiations, the signal to other unions will be
clear. After a meeting with farmers on Sunday,
Agriculture Minister Katerina Batzeli said the
government would not satisfy their financial
demands. “The government is determined to
get the country out of the crisis,” Batzeli said.
“It can’t afford the money they are asking for.”
The government has promised the EU to
narrow its double-digit budget shortfall to 2.8
percent of GDP by 2012 through welfare spending cuts, tax reforms and savings on public sector wages. The EU and markets have piled pres-

ATHENS: Protesting farmers march
in central Athens yesterday. Greek
farmers, who have blocked highways and frontier posts for a week to
demand higher product prices yesterday took their protest to Athens
as the government began fresh talks
to break the deadlock. — AFP
sure on the government to quickly implement
the plan to reduce its deficit and debt which is
seen rising to 124.9 percent of GDP this year,
according to EU estimates, making Greece the
bloc’s most indebted country.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou
has urged farmers to end protests that add further strain to Greece’s image, as the country
struggles with its worst financial crisis in
decades. — Reuters

LONDON: British Airways PLC
cabin crew began voting yesterday on whether to strike in a
long running dispute over pay
and working conditions — while
the airline starts training other
workers to take over their
duties. The Unite union called
the vote after BA won a court
order stopping workers from
carrying out a planned walkout
over the Christmas and New
Year travel period. The new ballot of some 12,000 cabin crew
closes on Feb 22, which means
that a strike could be called for
as early as March 1, although
Unite has pledged not to walk
out over the busy Easter holiday
period.
Workers are unhappy about
changes to staffing and pay,
including a pay freeze in 2010, a
switch to part-time work for
3,000 staff and a reduction in
cabin crew sizes from 15 to 14
on long-haul flights from
Heathrow airport. In an increasingly acrimonious dispute, BA
argues the plans are necessary
to ride out its dire financial situation — the carrier has been one
of the airlines hardest hit by the
global recession because of its

heavy running costs and
reliance on increasingly unpopular premium fares.
The airline yesterday began
training pilots, baggage handlers
and engineers in cabin crew
duties, leading Unite to warn
that inexperienced replacement
crews would put BA’s passengers at risk in emergency situations. The union said that a 21day fast track training program
is no substitute for the minimum
three-month course given to
permanent cabin crew.
“Not only does this show contempt for the crew, what message does it send to passengers
who have paid to be cared for by
a premier airline?” said Len
McCluskey, Unite’s assistant
general secretary. The airline
said that any training program for
replacement staff would meet
strict safety standards. Unite and
the GMB union, which represents around 7,000 check-in staff
and baggage handlers, have
issued a joint statement warning
all BA employees that if they
take up the company’s offer to
become strikebreakers they will
be putting their permanent jobs
at risk. — AP

26

BUSINESS

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Argentina central bank chief barred from premises
BUENOS AIRES: Police stopped the head
of Argentina’s central bank from entering
the bank on Sunday, hours after he vowed
to stay in his job despite a court ruling that
the government said meant he had to step
down.
Martin Redrado, who is locked in dispute with the president over her plan to
use central bank reserves to pay debt, said
he went to the bank with his lawyers to see
if he would be allowed to enter the premis-

es but that police officers stopped them.
“(This shows) a flagrant violation of the
court’s order,” Redrado said in a statement,
adding that he had presented a legal complaint against Cabinet Chief Anibal
Fernandez for “impeding him from carrying
out his duties.” President Cristina
Fernandez fired Redrado earlier this month
because he opposed her bid to use $6.6 billion in foreign currency reserves to service
debt obligations this year, but a court

ordered his reinstatement a day later.
Fernandez’s push to tap the reserves to
help meet some $13 billion in debt repayments this year has raised political tension
in Latin America’s No. 3 economy, rattling
financial markets and raising concerns a
planned $20 billion bond swap could be
delayed.
Another court ruled on Friday that
Congress
should
decide
whether
Fernandez was right to fire Redrado, but

government ministers interpreted the ruling as also saying he had to quit.
The cabinet chief, Anibal Fernandez,
said Redrado would not be allowed to continue working at the bank and the bank’s
board of directors named Vice President
Miguel Pesce as Redrado’s replacement.
Fernandez had already named Pesce as
Redrado’s replacement before the federal
court ordered his reinstatement.
Constitutional experts and lawmakers

from both the ruling party and opposition
also said the latest ruling meant Redrado
should step aside, but in a letter to a leading newspaper on Sunday, Redrado pledged
to stay on in his job.
“I maintain my decision to continue carrying out my duties as an official unless
Congress says otherwise in order to comply with the law and my convictions,” he
wrote in the letter published in daily La
Nacion.

A special congressional commission is
due to meet on Tuesday to discuss
Redrado’s fate, but Fernandez has stressed
that any recommendations it makes are
nonbinding.
Friday’s court rulings dealt another setback to the cash-strapped government’s
plan to tap part of the central bank’s $48
billion in foreign reserves, upholding an
earlier court freeze on the transfer of funds
to the Treasury. — Reuters

GDP seen up 7.5-8% in 2010 • Oil revenue fell to $2bn

Yemen eyes up to 8%
growth in 2010: CB
SANAA: Yemen’s new gas industry and foreign aid will fuel economic growth
of up to 8 percent this year, despite insecurity that has helped drive the riyal
to its lowest level for years, a senior Central Bank official said. The impover-

ished Arab country is fighting a civil war in the north, separatist unrest in the
south and Al Qaeda militants. Its population of 23 million is growing at 3.45
percent a year, even as oil reserves dwindle and water resources dry up.

Philips reports switch
to profit, focus on costs
THE HAGUE: Dutch electronics giant
Philips reported a huge improvement in
underlying performance and switch into
net profit in the fourth quarter, but said on
Thursday times were still hard and it
would focus on costs and innovation. The
group, which has already announced 9,000
job cuts, reported a fourth-quarter net
profit of 260 million euros ($368 million).
This was a big turnaround from a loss
of 1.17 billion euros in the same period of
last year and was better than expected by
analysts questioned by Dow Jones
Newswires, who had forecast net profit of
255 million euros. The group attributed
the turnaround to cost cutting and
improved underlying performance notably
in emerging markets, but warned that
“visibility beyond the short term remains
low and so we will continue our focus on
cost.”
The board said in a statement: “At the
same time, we will ensure that our businesses are well placed to capture growth
when it comes, not least by maintaining

investments in innovation, marketing and
emerging markets.”
Philips reported a 25-fold increase in
earnings before interest, tax and amortisation (EBITA) of 662 million euros. This
was driven by higher earnings, notably in
emerging markets, across all operating
sectors-healthcare, consumer lifestyle
and lighting, as well as a 191-million-euro
decline in restructuring and acquisitionrelated charges.
“Thanks to the increased resilience of
our company, we ended the year with a
strong fourth quarter,” Philips chief executive officer Gerard Kleisterlee said in a
statement, adding he was “confident” of
further progress in 2010.
The company would propose a dividend
of 70 euro cents per share, he said, up to
650 million euros, “as a sign of our confidence in our future”.
Hard-hit by the global economic crisis,
Philips announced last January that it
would cut 6,000 jobs worldwide, on top of
another 3,000 cuts announced in the

fourth quarter of 2008, in a bid to shave a
combined 600 million euros off spending
by 2010. Yesterday it said total sales for
the three months to December stood at
$7.26 billion, a drop of five percent from a
year earlier largely due to foreign
exchange factors. In spite of higher earnings, fourth-quarter cash inflow was 826
million euros lower than 12 months earlier, partly due to a 485-million-euro
asbestos-related settlement. Cash flow is
a measure of the speed at which a company accumulates cash before, and beyond,
making payments of all kinds. A surplus
provides room for manoeuvre in managing
current finances and may assist investment.
Net profit for the year totaled 424 million euros, against a net loss of 92 million
euros in 2008, with 2009 sales 11 percent
lower at 23 billion euros. Restructuring
costs for 2010 would be in the range of
150 million to 250 million euros, Philips
said, adding it expected the upward trend
in emerging markets to continue. — AFP

EU backs British bank aid
BRUSSELS: The European
Commission said yesterday
it had backed state aid
offered by Britain to banks
Bradford & Bingley and
Dunfermline, ending its last
two probes into assistance
offered as part of London
bank restructuring.
“The decision in the case
of Bradford & Bingley,
together with the decision
taken on Dunfermline, is
closing the chapter of UK
bank restructuring prompted by state aid in the context
of the financial crisis,” a
European
Commission
statement said.
Bradford & Bingley was
split-up, with impaired
assets nationalized in 2008

under a liquidation plan.
“The
commission
has
authorized the measures
because they are appropriate
and necessary for an orderly
winding down of the bank
while taking into account the
necessity to preserve the
confidence of creditors in
the financial system and
remedy a serious disturbance of the UK economy,”
the
commission
said.
Spanish
banking
giant
Santander bought part of the
assets of Bradford & Bingley
for 612 million pounds in
September 2009. In the case
of Dunfermline, a smaller
building society mainly
operating in Scotland, the
part considered ‘good’ was

sold in an auction to a competitor (Nationwide) with a
state financial contribution
of some 1.5 billion pounds
(1.7 billion euros or $2.4 billion) and the remainder put
into administration. The
commission “found that the
orderly
break-up
of
Dunfermline resulted in the
return to viability of the
good part ... and that the liquidation of a substantial part
of Dunfermline limited the
distortion of competition
caused by the aid,” a separate statement added.
Building societies, or
mutuals, are owned by their
members and are not listed
on the stock exchange. They
also specialize in home

loans. In Britain the crisis
first erupted in 2007 with
the stricken Northern Rock,
which was taken into public
ownership.
The British government
spent billions of pounds bailing out some of the country’s biggest institutions
including Royal Bank of
Scotland, 84 percent owned
by the state, and Lloyds
Banking Group, in which
London has a 43 percent
holding.
Last month, Britain
slapped a 50-percent tax rate
on bank employee bonuses
above 25,000 pounds to
recoup some of the cash
spent rescuing the financial
sector. — AFP

But fears of economic collapse are misplaced and the
Central Bank is ready to sell
more dollars to defend the riyal,
Ibrahim Al-Nahari, sub-governor for foreign banking operations, said.
“I expect 2010 will be a very
good year compared to 2009, he
told Reuters. “We are hoping to
see growth between 7.5 and 8
percent. This is basically attributed to the growth in gas.”
Exports from a $4.5 billion
liquefied natural gas (LNG)
project began only in October,
several months behind schedule, keeping real growth in
gross domestic product (GDP)
to 4.1 to 4.2 percent in 2009
against a targeted 5 percent,
Nahari said. Oil income, which
accounts for up to 75 percent of
budget revenue, plunged to $2
billion in 2009 from $4.4 billion
in the previous year when world
prices peaked, he said.
Tourism earnings and remittances from Yemenis working
abroad also suffered in the global financial crisis. But Nahari
said revenue would rise this
year with oil prices up and LNG
exports gradually increasing,
while more of the $5 billion in
foreign aid pledged in 2006
would be disbursed.
Yemen’s budget is strained
by fuel subsidies, especially
imported diesel, which cost it
more than $2 billion in 2009,
Nahari said. The bill for diesel
subsidies, a fraught political
issue, will be similar in 2010,
the finance ministry says.
Officials give no figures for
military spending, estimated by
the US Central Intelligence
Agency at 6.6 percent of GDP in
2006, but costs must have risen
since the government launched
a major offensive against Shi’ite
rebels in the north in August.
Nahari said Yemen held foreign
reserves of $7 billion, equivalent to 10 months of imports,
and the Central Bank would sell
more dollars if needed to calm
jitters about the riyal. “The
volatility is not due to economic
factors but due to psychology,”
he said, blaming “rumors” about
economic weakness.
“We will not allow drastic
changes in the exchange rate,”
he said. “If we see any pressure
on the exchange rate due to
non-economic reasons, then we
sell dollars.”
Nahari said exchange rate
fluctuations had averaged less
than 2 percent in the past five
years. Last week, when moneychangers said the riyal had
weakened to 215 to the dollar
from 208 the previous week, the
Central Bank offered $200 million, but the market took only
$150 million. The next day it
sold $90 million out of $100 million offered. The bank has sold
more than $400 million to back
the riyal since December,
Nahari said. It injected $1.9 billion in 2009.
The government expects
inflation to accelerate this year,
but hopes to limit the rise to 8
or 9 percent, compared with an
average of less than 5 percent
last year, he said.
Nahari said total public debt
stood at 30 to 32 percent of
2008 GDP, of which some 22
percent was foreign. Local
banks, which mainly finance
trade, had been only affected
minimally by global turmoil
because they had little exposure to international markets,
he added. The Central Bank
has been encouraging them to
merge or increase their capital
to become more competitive
as Yemen wanted to attract
more foreign banks, he said. A
few foreign banks, mostly
from the Gulf, operate in
Yemen. — Reuters

SHANGHAI: A man walks past a sign of Bank of China in Shanghai yesterday. Shares in Bank of China were slightly higher on January 25 after the
lender said it planned to issue up to 40 billion yuan ($5.9 billion) in convertible bonds. — AFP

German rebound boosts
euro-zone industrial orders
BRUSSELS: New industrial orders shot up by 2.7
percent in November across the 16 countries that
share the euro, thanks to a German rebound, massively revised figures showed yesterday.
The European Union originally issued a figure
of 1.6 percent on Friday, but published new numbers on Monday after “corrected German data”
was received, underlining a huge turnaround from
October’s 2.1 percent fall-also upwardly revised.
“The even healthier than previously reported pick
up... bodes well for production in the near term at
least and gives a welcome boost to euro-zone
growth prospects for the first quarter of 2010,”
said IHS Global Insight analyst Howard Archer.
“As such, it may modestly dilute concerns that
the euro-zone’s recovery from deep recession
could be already struggling for momentum.” The
amended Eurostat data also showed that factory

orders in the euro-zone were down just 0.5 percent-as against the 1.5 percent originally
announced-compared to one year earlier. In the
27-nation EU as a whole, industrial orders followed a similar course, rising by 2.6 percent in
November from October (the increase was originally pegged at 1.8 percent) but falling by 1.2 percent (instead of 2.0 percent) over 12 months.
Among the 21 member states for which data was
available, orders rose in 15 during November-two
more than initially thought-with Greece notably
posting a 7.3 percent increase.
On an annual basis, 14 countries saw reduced
orders, with Ireland recording the largest drop at
26.5 percent. Archer underlined that the euro’s
retreat from a late-November, 15-month high of
$1.5145-it is currently trading at around $1.41-is
offering further respite.

Ericsson cuts 1,500 more jobs, profit plunges
STOCKHOLM:
Ericsson
announced yesterday an extra
1,500 job cuts under restructuring which bit deeply into
fourth-quarter net profit at the
firm, the world leader in phone
network equipment.
Total announce job cuts are
now about 6,500, generating
huge restructuring charges
with the intention of bringing
equally huge cost savings.
The Swedish telecom giant
said that sales had dropped
owing to cuts in investment
by mobile phone operators in
a number of markets, including in developing nations in
central Europe, the Middle

East and Africa.
In a sign of the impact of
the economic crisis on the
telecom industry, Ericsson’s
net profit plunged by 92 percent to 314 million kronor
(30.7 million euros, $43.4 million) between October and
December. That was in contrast to a net profit of 3.89 billion kronor in the same period
of 2008, the company said in a
statement. The profit margin
was much lower than expected as analysts polled by Dow
Jones Newswires had forecast
a net profit of 3.23 billion kronor. Restructuring costs nearly doubled to 4.3 billion kro-

STOCKHOLM: Ericsson’s new CEO, Hans
Vestberg presents the accounts for the previous
year during a press conference at Ericssons headquarters in Stockholm yesterday. — AP

nor in the fourth quarter,
compared to 2.3 billion kronor in the same period in
2008, and for the full year the
charges totalled 11.3 billion
kronor, the company said.
The company estimates
that its restructuring program will cost up to 14 billion
kronor and bring annual savings of between 15 billion and
16 billion kronor.
“When the initial (restructuring)
program
was
announced in January 2009, it
was anticipated that the
actions would result in a
reduction of the number of
employees by some 5,000, of
which about 1,000 in Sweden,
Ericsson said. “The 5,000 has
been exceeded and is estimated to reach approximately
6,500,” the company said in
the statement.
Ericsson has also suffered
from the difficulties at its
two joint ventures, Sony
Ericsson and ST-Ericsson,
which together chalked up
charges of 1.46 billion kronor. Sales fell by 13 percent
to 58.3 billion kronor in the
fourth quarter in the wake of
the global economic crisis
and growing competition
from telecom equipment
industry with the rise of
China’s Huawei. — AFP

TECHNOLOGY

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

27

China rights groups hit by cyberattacks: Activists
BEIJING: The websites of at least
five organisations dealing with
Chinese human rights and dissident issues have suffered hacking
attacks in recent days, one of the
groups said yesterday. The alleged
attacks come amid a Sino-US row
over Internet freedom sparked by
US search engine Google’s threat
this month to leave China, partly

over what it said were cyberattacks aimed at the email accounts
of Chinese rights activists.
Chinese
Human
Rights
Defenders, a network of domestic
and overseas China rights
activists, released a statement
saying attacks on its website
began Saturday afternoon and continued for about 14 hours. It said

others reporting cyberattacks
included the human rights-related
news and information sites Canyu,
Rights and Livelihood Watch, and
New Century News, as well as the
Independent Chinese Pen, a
writer’s group.
The “attack paralysed CHRD’s
website by consuming its server’s
resources”, its emailed statement

said, “making it impossible for...
users to visit the website”. CHRD,
which disseminates news about
China’s dissident community and
rights abuses in the country, quoted its Internet service provider
saying the hacking attempt was
“the most intense” the ISP had
ever experienced.
The statement said the attack’s

source could not be determined but
that China’s government was suspected due to the force of the
attack. AFP was not immediately
able to reach the group by phone.
Google has threatened to abandon
its Chinese search engine and perhaps end all operations in the country over the cyberattacks on its
systems, which it said were sus-

pected of having originated in China
and seemed well-coordinated.
It has also said it is no longer
willing to bow to Chinese government censors. China yesterday
denied any state involvement in
cyberattacks on Google. Such
accusations were a “groundless”
attempt to “denigrate China”, an
unnamed spokesman for the

Ministry
of
Industry
and
Information Technology told state
news agency Xinhua.
US officials have said previously that China has built up a sophisticated cyber warfare program and
that a spate of attacks on US systems and elsewhere in recent
years can be traced back to
Chinese sources. —AFP

US Internet giant has threatened to abandon its Chinese search engine

China denies state role
in Google cyberattacks
SYDNEY: Google Australia previews its new Street View Trike at Taronga Zoo in
Sydney yesterday. The zoo will be the first location mapped using the new Google
vehicle enabling Internet users to view the imagery collected. —AP

Anti-garbage campaigners plan
mass Internet-led clean up
TALLINN: Fed up with seeing
the environment strewn with
garbage, activists from around
the globe aim to muster a million volunteers this year for a
mass clean-up piloted via the
Internet, organizers said yesterday. The “Let’s Do It” operation
is the brainchild of campaigners
in Estonia, a small Baltic state
which is a hub for nature-lovers
and one of the world’s most
Internet-wired nations.
After a successful operation
at home in 2008, when volunteers removed thousands of illegal rubbish dumps, the
Estonians have shared their
lessons with foreign campaigners at a conference that ended
yesterday. “Since the campaign
day in Estonia in May 2008 we
have been contacted by people
from dozens of states, from

Japan to Brazil, setting up voluntary teams to organize similar
campaigns in their homelands,”
Toomas Trapido, a lawmaker
and a mastermind of the movement, told AFP.
Rainer Nolvak, an IT entrepreneur, board member of the
Estonian Nature Fund, and fellow-mastermind told AFP that
activists from Portugal to India
plan events aiming to draw a
total of a million people. Like
the Estonians, campaigners
elsewhere will use special software and mobile phones to map
and photograph illegal garbage
dumps. Having located the
sites, they will call for clean-up
volunteers.
Estonia’s landmark one-day
operation in 2008 mustered
50,000 people in the nation of
1.3 million. They collected

10,000 tons of rubbish. “We had
no idea that so many people
would turn out and that the
campaign would spread around
the globe,” Trapido said.
The Estonians set up a website, www.letsdoitworld.org,
with tips for others. A voluntary
clean-up took place Saturday in
part of the Indian capital Delhi, a
pilot for a larger operation
planned across the city in
September. In Europe, a cleanup is due in Portugal in March.
“We hope to gather up to
150,000 volunteers to follow
Estonia’s
example,”
Portuguese IT professor and
campaigner Francisco Moura
told AFP in Tallinn. Nara
Petrovic, head of a campaign in
Slovenia, said she aimed to
gather 200,000 people there in
April. —AFP

Bill Gates says Internet needs to thrive in China
WASHINGTON: Microsoft Corp Chairman
Bill Gates yesterday said the Internet needs
to thrive in China as an engine of free speech
and described official online censorship by
Beijing as “very limited.” Asked in an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America about
Google Inc’s dispute with China, Gates said
the Internet is subject to different kinds of
censorship around the world but has proved a
consistent success at promoting openness
and the exchange of ideas.
“You’ve got to decide: Do you want to
obey the laws of the countries you’re in, or
not? If not, you may not end up doing business there,” Gates, the world’s richest man,
said without mentioning Google by name.
“The Chinese efforts to censor the Internet
have been very limited. It’s easy to go around
it, and so I think keeping the Internet thriv-

ing there is very important,” he said.
The interview coincided with efforts by
China to defend its curbs on the Internet
nearly two weeks after search engine giant
Google said it wanted to stop censoring its
Chinese Google.cn website. The company
said it was alarmed by online hacking attacks
from within China. Google’s complaints have
received backing from the White House. But
China has countered with accusations that
Washington was using the Internet to support subversion in Iran.
Gates, 54, who co-founded computer
software giant Microsoft, remains the
company’s chairman but tends to focus his
attention on the philanthropic activities of
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
which he runs with his wife Melinda and
father William Gates Sr. —Reuters

Mozilla leader worries
about Internet limits
MUNICH: The leader of the
Mozilla Project, whose Firefox
Web browser now has 350 million users, said Sunday that she is
concerned that legal restrictions
could limit Internet expansion.
Mitchell Baker said she worried
about “the increase in laws that
make it difficult to run an open
network,” especially rules about
content.
“You suddenly become liable
for anything that gets downloaded, whether it’s legal or not,”
she said. “If you said to a municipality, if you build a road, you
have to guarantee nothing illegal
happens on it - that’s what’s happening on the Internet now. So
that’s the kind of regulatory disruption that’s going to have some
long-term consequences.” Baker
spoke at an opening panel of a
three-day conference on digital
innovation and creative ideas.
The DLD conference , which
stands for Digital-Life-Design , is
chaired by Hubert Burda of
Germany, owner of Hubert
Burda Media, and digital investor
Yossi Vardi, who co-pioneered

instant messaging and chaired
the panel, titled “Disruptive.”
Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of
Skype which now has over 500
million users, said successful
companies can’t become complacent and must continue to make
improvements and not be afraid
“of disrupting themselves.”
Vardi asked J.P. Rangaswami,
chief scientist of the BT Group in
Britain, what he thought of what
Skype was doing to telecommunications companies like his.
“Watch this space,” Rangaswami
replied cryptically. Vardi then
asked Rangaswami whether he
sees the industry following
Skype’s efforts to set minimal
charges for phone calls around
the world.
“I think those parts of the
industry that don’t follow what
Niklas is doing will either find
themselves out of a job or working for him,” he replied.
American entrepreneur Jimmy
Wales, whose nonprofit charity
founded Wikipedia, the free
online encyclopedia that has 350
million users, said it was a “very,

very bad business” to try to compete against because the reference work is offered for free.
He ruled out advertising on
the site for now , but left open the
possibility it could happen sometime in the future to raise money
for the charity. Moderator Vardi
expressed amazement that the
Internet companies had small
work forces despite their vast
number of users. Skype has just
over 600 employees, Mozilla
about 250, and Wikipedia just 30.
What advice would the three give
to companies trying to get 100
million users?
“Stay out of software first of
all,” said Mozilla’s Baker. “Go to
Web sites and services.” Wales
said, “Have a very pure, simple
vision that everyone can understand immediately.” Zennstrom
said the idea should also “make
consumers’ lives easier.” And, he
stressed, “don’t do a copycat of
someone
else.”
BT’s
Rangaswami said he believes the
Web in the past 20 years has
made people more willing to collaborate, to work together. —AP

BEIJING: China yesterday denied any state involvement in cyberattacks and demanded official answers. The US Internet giant has threatened to
on Google and accused the United States of “double standards” as a row abandon its Chinese search engine, and perhaps end all operations in the
with Washington over Internet freedom intensified. Beijing fired off its lat- country over the cyberattacks. It has also said it is no longer willing to bow
est salvo after the White House said President Barack Obama was “trou- to Chinese government censors. But China said the hacking charges were
bled” by Google’s statements it had been attacked by China-based hackers, without foundation.
The “accusation that the
Chinese government participated in (any) cyberattack, either
in an explicit or inexplicit way,
is groundless and aims to denigrate China,” an unnamed
spokesman for the Ministry of
Industry and Information
Technology told state news
agency Xinhua.
“We are firmly opposed to
that,” the spokesman said.
“China’s policy on Internet
safety is transparent and consistent,” he added, saying the
country with the world’s largest
online community was itself the
“biggest victim” of hacking.
The Global Times-an Englishlanguage newspaper run by the
People’s Daily, the ruling
Communist Party’s mouthpiece-went further, saying the
United States itself was a major
source of hack attacks.
“The US is the first country
to launch cyber warfare,” it said
in an editorial. It said
Washington had a “cyber army
of 80,000 people equipped with
over 2,000 computer viruses,”
citing a US defense expert, Joel
Harker. “‘Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you.’
BEIJING: Workers repair a partially broken marble tablet which bears Google’s logo in front of Google China’s
The golden rule should apply
even online,” the paper said-a
headquarters building in Beijing, China, yesterday. —AP
point made by Xinhua in an editorial calling the US “hypocritical” for criticizing others on
hacking.
The Global Times also hit
out at what it called
“Washington’s
continuous
resort to double standards” and
said Western criticism of
China’s Internet policies came
“either out of ignorance of the
facts, or a Cold War mentality.”
RIYADH: Dell Chairman and ly creating new growth oppor- panies like Dell enrich our pro- research it can help enable is
In another interview on Xinhua,
CEO Michael Dell today tunities in response to chang- gram by sharing best practices important to a nation’s base of
a spokesman for China’s State
and encouraging sustainable knowledge capital and its longemphasized the critical role of ing market conditions.”
Council, or cabinet, said
Dell commended Saudi social and economic activity term prosperity,” he said.
information technology (IT)
Beijing’s efforts to remove
Dell shared his perspective
and entrepreneurial thought- Arabia’s business growth, both in the region and around
harmful content from the
leadership in helping organiza- technology adoption and com- the world. SAGIA’s new on entrepreneurialism throughInternet were legitimate and
tions to remain competitive mitment to education initia- 60x24x7 program to support out his remarks, including
should be free from “unjustifiand achieve long-term success tives and said it is setting an investors seeking opportuni- strategies for nurturing and
able interference”.
for
fast-growth ties in the Kingdom is one of sustaining a culture of thought
during his keynote speech to example
The Google row, which
leadership. “As leaders, we
delegates attending the Global nations around the world. “The many examples.”
erupted almost two weeks ago,
Dell also described how need to be willing and open to
Competitiveness Forum in Kingdom has moved from 67th
has threatened to damage Sinoto 13th place on the World today’s computing advance- empowering a culture of entreRiyadh, Saudi Arabia.
US ties, which are already
“IT has become a strategic Bank’s Ease of Doing Business ments are driving competitive preneurship,” he said. “This
dogged by a series of trade and
enabler of sustainable competi- index, and is the most compet- advantage across industries, means listening very carefully
currency issues, US arms sales
tiveness for businesses, com- itive country in the Middle including science and educa- to our employees to ensure we
to Taiwan and climate change.
munities and nations,” said East,” said His Excellency tion. “IT has become one of the are capturing all the innovative,
White
House
deputy
Dell. “Technology can play a Amr Al Dabbagh, governor of most important competitive dif- creative thinking that enables
spokesman Bill Burton said
Arabian
General ferentiators in top learning us to better serve our cuskey role in helping an organiza- Saudi
Friday that Obama “continues
Authority institutions, and the intellectu- tomers while driving our own
tion develop and sustain its Investment
to be troubled by the cybersestrengths while simultaneous- (SAGIA). “Leaders from com- al discovery and breakthrough next wave of growth.” —AFP
curity breach that Google
attributes to China”, adding “all
we are looking for from China
are some answers”.
Some US groups are also
calling on Washington to challenge China’s so-called “Great
Firewall” of web censorship at
the World Trade Organisation.
Last week, Beijing lashed out at
Washington after a speech by
US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton on Internet freedom,
saying the address was “harmful” to relations.
“We urge the United States
to respect facts and stop using
the so-called Internet freedom
issue to criticise China unreasonably,” said foreign ministry
spokesman Ma Zhaoxu. In her
speech, Clinton lamented what
she said were Beijing’s increasing efforts to control what its
384 million web users can see.
Google has not yet stopped censoring search results on
google.cn, but Google chief
executive Eric Schmidt said last
week it would happen soon.
Google vice-president for
the Asia-Pacific, Daniel Alegre,
said in an interview with
Japan’s public broadcaster NHK
that the company viewed China
as a “very important, very
strategic market”. “So we hope
TOKYO: A man uses his mobile phone before a cellular shop of Japan’s telecommunication giant KDDI in
to be able to remain committed
and grow within the market,”
Tokyo yesterday. KDDI’s net profit for the third quarter of its fiscal year dropped due to cost for the restriction
he said. —AFP
of fixed line business, the company said. —AFP

of spending pledged at December’s
Copenhagen global climate meeting.
Participants at the meeting agreed to a
target of channeling $100 billion per year
to developing countries to combat climate
change by 2020. Gates said that amount
represents more than three quarters of
foreign aid currently given by the richest
countries per year. “I am concerned that
some of this money will come from reduc-

ing other categories of foreign aid, especially health,” Gates wrote in a letter,
released late on Sunday, describing the
work of his foundation.
“If just 1 percent of the $100 billion
goal came from vaccine funding, then
700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases,” Gates added. Taking
the focus away from health aid could be
bad for the environment in the long run,

said Gates, “because improvements in
health, including voluntary family planning, lead people to have smaller families,
which in turn reduces the strain on the
environment.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
which he runs with his wife Melinda and
father William Gates Sr., had an endowment worth $34 billion as of September.
Gates, 54, remains Microsoft chairman but

focuses his attention on his foundation.
Since starting in 1994, the foundation has
handed out more than $21 billion in grants.
Gates said he was worried generally about
levels of government aid from rich countries to poor countries slipping with tough
economic conditions globally.
“Because of budget deficits, there is
significant risk that aid budgets will either
be cut or not increase much,” Gates said in

his letter. He singled out Italy for criticism. “Italy was at the low end of
European givers even before the
Berlusconi government came in and cut
the aid by over half, making them uniquely stingy among European donors,” Gates
said. According to Forbes magazine,
Gates was the richest man in the world in
2009 with an estimated fortune of $40 billion.—Reuters

PORT-AU-PRINCE: A 2-year-old Haitian girl, front, is given water by her sister as she eats cookies supplied during a food distribution event to the citizens in the Cite Soleil neighborhood in Port-au-Prince,
Haiti, Sunday. —AP

Mekong tiger population
plunges to ‘crisis point’
BANGKOK: Governments must act decisively to prevent the extinction of tigers
in Southeast Asia’s Greater Mekong
region, where numbers have plunged
more than 70 percent in 12 years, the
WWF said Tuesday. The wild tiger population across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar,
Thailand and Vietnam has dropped from
an estimated 1,200 in 1998 — the last
Year of Tiger-to around 350 today, according to the conservation group.
The report was released ahead of a
landmark three-day conference on tiger
conservation, which will be attended in
the Thai resort town of Hua Hin from
Wednesday by ministers from 13 Asian
tiger range countries. It said the regional
decline was reflected in the global wild
tiger population, which is at an all-time
low of 3,200, down from an estimated
20,000 in the 1980s and 100,000 a century
ago.
“Today, wild tiger populations are at a
crisis point,” the WWF said, ahead of the

start of the Year of the Tiger on February
14, according to the Chinese lunar calendar. It cited growing demand for tiger
body parts used in traditional Chinese
medicine as a major factor endangering
the region’s Indochinese tiger population.
Infrastructure developments were also
blamed by the report for fragmenting
tigers’ habitats, such as roads cutting
through forests.
“Decisive action must be taken to
ensure this iconic sub-species does not
reach the point of no return,” said Nick
Cox, coordinator of the WWF Greater
Mekong tiger program.
“There is a potential for tiger populations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to
become locally extinct by the next Year of
the Tiger, in 2022, if we don’t step up
actions to protect them.”
Although Indochinese tigers were
once found in abundance across the
Greater Mekong region, the WWF says
there are now no more than 30 tigers per

country in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
The remaining populations are mainly
found in mountainous border areas
between Thailand and Myanmar. But the
WWF is calling on the ministers in Hua
Hin to take action to double the numbers
of wild tigers by 2022.
“This region has huge potential to
increase tiger numbers, but only if there
are bold and coordinated efforts across the
region and of an unprecedented scale that
can protect existing tigers, tiger prey and
their habitat,” said Cox. Worldwide political efforts to secure the tiger’s future will
culminate in a Tiger Summit in
September in Vladivostok, Russia, hosted
by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
“There is an unprecedented opportunity to galvanise political will and action to
turn the tide on wild tiger numbers,” said
Mike Baltzer, head of WWF’s global tiger
initiative. “But to do this, we must stop
the trade in tiger parts, rampant poaching,
and secure the tiger’s habitats.”—AFP

PORT-AU-PRINCE:
Outbreaks of infectious diseases feared after Haiti’s devastating earthquake have not yet
materialized, but illness and
infections are still a threat to
survivors, health officials said
on Sunday. The Jan 12 quake
killed up to 200,000 and left as
many as 3 million hurt or homeless and pleading for medical
aid, food and water in nightmarish conditions in the Western
Hemisphere’s poorest country.
Doctors worry that crowded,
unsanitary conditions in hundreds of improvised refugee
camps could spread illnesses
such as typhoid and measles.
They also fear for the thousands of people who have
endured operations and now
need to avoid infection as they
recover. “We are talking about
thousands of amputations and
maybe half of the people who
have been amputated have several limbs amputated,” said Dr
Mirta Roses, director of the Pan
American Health Organization,
told a news conference at
Haiti’s airport.
Many others suffered head
and eye damage. “It’s not only
limbs,” she said. With fewer
trauma surgeries as the search
and rescue effort winds down,
doctors will concentrate on caring for those recovering from
injury. “The profile is changing
and there are going to be different needs for post-operative
care and follow-up,” Roses said.
That task is complicated
because the country’s remaining hospitals — 11 were
destroyed and many others
damaged-are at capacity, and
because many of those who
were treated no longer have
homes where they can recover.
“People don’t want to go out
of the hospitals. And also their
relatives don’t want to go out of
the hospitals,” she said.
Despite the thousands of emergency surgeries already performed, patients are still coming to clinics with fractured
bones and skin wounds that
have not been treated in the 12
days since the quake and which
require specialized care that is
not always available, Roses
said.
Health officials are also
extremely wary of the start of
the six-month hurricane season
in June. Haiti has been hit
extremely hard by storms in
recent years, with hundreds of
people killed in 2008. Experts
had felt relieved when the 2009
hurricane season spared the
impoverished nation as it
recovery from 2008, Roses
said. “We thought that we
were extremely fortunate that
we didn’t have any hurricanes,” Roses said. “Then, of
course, we had the earthquake.”—Reuters

JAKARTA: Two months old Sumatran tigers named Puji (R), a male, and Wati (L), a female, born in captivity at Jakarta’s Ragunan
Zoo lie on a rug in the sun after a bath at the zoo on January 22, 2010. —AFP

BERLIN: Knut, the 3-year-old polar bear, lies in the snow in his enclosure at
Berlin’s Zoologischer Garten zoo yesterday. —AFP

in the news
After 2008 scare, China
finds more toxic milk
BEIJING: Authorities in southwestern China
have ordered three batches of milk products off
shelves because they contain a chemical that
killed at least six children in 2008, causing global concern over the made-in-China brand. The
health department in Guizhou province stopped
the sales of dairy products made by three
Chinese companies, the state-run China Daily
newspaper said.

Gene discovery may help
guide breast cancer care
CHICAGO: An abnormality in two genes can
make a common class of chemotherapy drugs

used to fight breast cancer less effective, US
researchers said on Sunday in a finding that
could help doctors better tailor treatments.
They said changes in two genes on a small
region of chromosome 8q made tumors resist
the effects of drugs called anthracyclines, but
not other types of chemotherapy drugs.

WHO slams swine flu
critics as ‘irresponsible’
GENEVA: The World Health Organization yesterday slammed as “irresponsible” critics who
claim swine flu is a fake pandemic created for the
benefit of drug companies. The U.N. health
agency said the outbreak of a new strain of H1N1
influenza in North America last year had all the
scientific characteristics of a pandemic, adding the
WHO was never improperly influenced by the
pharmaceutical industry that has benefited from
huge government orders for vaccines and antiviral drugs.
“The world is going through a real pandemic.
The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible,” the WHO said in a strongly worded
statement yesterday.
A WHO spokesman
declined to spell out who the World Health
Organization was responding to in its statement,
saying only that “this applies to anyone who
believes it is not a real pandemic.” The
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
a human rights watchdog based in Strasbourg,
France, recently recommended that the EU investigate WHO’s swine flu pandemic declaration to
see if the health agency acted under undue influence. WHO officials are due to meet Tuesday with
the Council of Europe, which is not an official
European Union body and has no power to act
against WHO.

According to a WHO tally dated Jan. 17, more
than 209 countries and territories have reported
laboratory confirmed cases of swine flu, including
at least 14,142 deaths. This is far fewer than
would be expected to die each year from seasonal
flu, but the figure is likely to exclude many unreported cases, according to WHO.
WHO
spokesman Gregory Hartl said the relatively low
number of confirmed deaths from swine flu didn’t
mean the virus wasn’t a pandemic.
“A pandemic has nothing to do with severity or
number of deaths,” he told The Associated Press.
“A pandemic literally is a global spread of a disease.” He said WHO was “always very measured
and sober in what we said and we always
described the virus as causing overwhelmingly
mild disease.
“We cannot control how people react to this
information,” he added. In its statement, WHO
said it had put in place numerous safeguards to
prevent conflicts of interest among its advisers,
including requiring them to provide a signed declaration detailing any professional or financial
interest that could affect their impartiality. “WHO
takes allegations of conflict of interest seriously
and is confident of its decision-making independence regarding the pandemic influenza,” it
said.—AP

Therapy to roll back
tension headaches
COLOGNE: “A dull pain presses my entire head.”
Or, “It’s as if a much-too-tight steel band were
wrapped around my head.” This is how many people
describe tension headaches. “Up to 70 per cent of
Germans have these symptoms two or three times a
month,” noted Hans-Christoph Diener, spokesman
for the German Neurology Society (DGN). Although
episodic pains of this kind are unpleasant, they can
usually be easily coped with.
Tension headaches, known medically as tensiontype headaches, are a real problem if they become
chronic, however. “As defined by specialists, this is
when the pains occur 15 or more days a month for a
least three consecutive months,” explained Volker
Limmroth, head physician at Cologne-Merheim
Hospital’s neurological clinic. Limmroth said the best
way to determine whether the headaches were
chronic was by noting each occurrence in a headache
diary. Between two and three per cent of the German
population suffer from chronic tension headaches, he
pointed out.
Diener, who founded the West German Headache
Centre at Essen University Hospital, said that people
with frequent tension headaches should by all means
see a neurologist or pain therapist.
“There seems to be a time factor,” he said. “If you
catch a person on the way to chronification, it’s possible to ‘roll back’ the tension headaches with the

help of multimodal therapy.” But if the sufferer has
been having headaches for three to five years
already, he added, then lessening the severity of the
pain is the most that can be done.
Multimodal therapy rests on four pillars. The first
is long-term medicinal treatment. Painkilling drugs
are unsuitable, though, because when taken over a
long period they can not only have various side
effects but also aggravate the headaches or cause
them to become chronic.
“Tricyclic antidepressants such as amitriptyline
are usually prescribed instead,” Diener said. They
affect the metabolism of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain and make patients less sensitive to
pain.
The second pillar is behaviour therapy. “Two
methods are particularly effective against tension
headaches: progressive muscle relaxation as developed by (American physician Edmund) Jacobson and
autogenic training,” remarked Susanne Grohs-von
Reichenbach, a relaxation therapist in Munich.
Progressive muscle relaxation involves tensing
and then relaxing certain muscle groups, which
lessens the subjective intensity of the headaches.
Autogenic training, on the other hand, is a concentrative self-relaxation technique. A basic training session of the latter is said to be specifically effective
against headaches. —dpa

WHATʼS ON IN KUWAIT

30

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Ravi Yuvasena pays tribute to Paritala

avi Yuvasena, Kuwait paid a
grand tribute to Paritala
Ravindra on his fifth death
anniversary in Kuwait on Sunday.
Paritala Ravindra followed in his
father’s footsteps and entered electoral
politics by joining the Telugu Desam
Party. He was elected four times as an

R

MLA from Penukonda constituency in
Anantapur district. He was slain by his
political rivals in 2005. He was one of
the most controversial yet popular leaders in the history of Andhra Pradesh
politics.
On the occasion, Paritala Ravi
Yuvasena, organized a meeting in

Private school donates $ 4,000 to Haiti
nglish School Fahaheel
(ESF) handed Kuwait
Red Crescent Society
(KRCS) $4,000 donation for
the victims of Haiti’s recent
earthquake. Speaking to KUNA
on Monday, KRCS Chairman
Barjas Al-Barjas praised the
humanitarian initiative of the
students. He said private
schools in Kuwait always provided donations whenever a
disaster happened. Meanwhile,
students from the school told
KUNA that they hoped the
donation will reduce the suffering of the victims. They called
the people of Kuwait to take
part in efforts of providing aid
to the people of Haiti. In very
few minutes, the quake left
thousands killed and injured,
they said, expressing condolences to the families of the
victims and wishing the injured
quick recovery. —KUNA

E

yro Malabar Cultural Association
(SMCA) Kuwait honored the visiting
auxiliary Bishop of Kottayam
Archdioces Mar Joseph Pandarasseril in a
special function organized at Utsav
Auditorium, Abbasiya. The meeting was
chaired by the president of SMCA Sebastian
Purayidathil. Felicitations were delivered

in his reply speech expressed his happiness
of being with the SMCA family members.
His Lordship also conveyed greetings from
the Migrants Commission of Syro Malabar
Synod to all office bearers and members of
SMCA. Anil Thayil, General Secretary of
SMCA welcomed all and Thomas Kuruvila,
the treasurer delivered the vote of thanks.

Adopt a pet

Sue Anderson
Consultants visit Kuwait

O

llie is a male persian mix. He is sweet, psychic, and knows when you need a cat in
your lap. He is friendly with other cats and
is about two years old.

ue
Anderson
Consultants, (SAC)
Education Consultants
and UK boarding school
experts have completed
their visit to Kuwait with
success after meeting with
more than 20 families over
two days at the Radisson Blu
Hotel on January 20 and 21.
Sara Sparling, Education
Consultant commented on
the turnout, “We had families of different nationalities
varying from Kuwaiti nationals, British, Indian, German,
Egyptian, Syrian and others.
The families came with their
children of all ages seeking
our guidance and valued
experience to help them find
a suitable school that matches their requirements and
their child’s abilities. Many
of the students were looking
to start their sixth form
studies in the UK as early as
September 2010, only 6
months away. Before we

S

share the list of possible
schools with the family, we
make sure that we confirm
availability of places with the
schools to take the child at a
certain age. All, if not most,
of the extracurricular activities are included in their
curriculum.”
Sue
Anderson
Consultants take the information and requirements
from concerned families and
filter them through a database of 350 UK Boarding
Schools to find a list of
schools that might suit the
child’s and the parent’s
needs. They then arrange
for prospectuses to be
mailed to the parents, interviews arranged as well as
visits to schools in the UK
when necessary. Their service is Free, impartial and
aims for the best outcome
for the family. Farah, a student who would like to
enroll in a UK Boarding

School
as
early
as
September 2010 has already
been considered by 2 of the
schools based on the information we shared with four
schools of her choice. Farah
will be going to continue her
A Levels before continuing
her university education in
the UK” Added Sara.
The Consultants visit to
Kuwait is part of the annual
UK Boarding School Tour of
the Middle East, where they
aim to meet families interested in UK schools to offer
impartial help and guidance
on the best boarding school
for each child. The tour will
include Bahrain, Qatar,
Oman and concludes in a 3
day education UK Boarding
School Exhibition in Dubai
on the 2th, 26th and 27th of
February 2010 which will
gather more than 28 schools
and enable families to meet
the heads and get first hand
information.

L

illy is a 1 year-old female terrier mix. Lilly is a gorgeous dog that is
just as happy as can be. She has a slight deformity to her front right
leg that she was born with but she has no idea. She has a wonderful
spirit and will do best in a home with children over 8 and gets along well
with other dogs.

B

atchon is a very alert white persian cat! His eyes are wide watching everything going on around him. Batchon would do
best in a home with children over 8.

S

hoto is a 10 month-old male mix breed. Shoto is an active dog
with a very loving temperament. Shoto gets along well with
other dogs and needs room to run. He will do best in a villa
with a garden and with children over 12.

Embassy information

31

WHATʼS ON IN KUWAIT

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Annual winter camp held

EMBASSY OF SRI LANKA
The Embassy of the
Democratic Socialist
Republic of Sri Lanka
will celebrate the
62nd Anniversary of
Sri Lanka’s National
Day at the Embassy premises at 8:30 am on
04.02.2010. The ceremony will include the
hoisting of the national flag, reading of National
Day messages, remembrance of national
heroes, religious ceremonies followed by a
reception. All Sri Lankan nationals and wellwishers are cordially invited for the event. Sri
Lanka Embassy - Block-l0, Jabriya, Kuwait.
(Tel. 25339140, 25339150)

EMBASSY OF KENYA
The Embassy of the
Republic of Kenya is
happy to inform the
general public and
visitors to Kenya of a
reduction in the cost
of tourist visas by 50%, continuing through all
of 2010. Additionally, in recognition of the family travel segment, Kenya is giving a complete
waiver of visit fees to children aged 16 years
and below. Visitors are urged to take this
opportunity and experience unique Kenyan
beach holidays on palm fringed, sandy beaches,
safaris in the country’s famous national parks,
and activity based tourism. For more information contact the Kenya Embassy located at
Surra, block 6, Street 9, Villa No.3. Tel.
25353314/ 25353362 or visit the Mission’s
websites www.kenyaembkuwait.com &
www.magicalkenya.com. Official timings are
8:00 am - 4:00 pm, Sundays through
Thursdays.
EMBASSY OF GREECE
The Embassy of
Greece has the pleasure to announce that
with a view to promote business interaction and commercial
relations between Greece and Kuwait and to
present further support for the Kuwaiti
importers, it requests all Kuwaiti Companies
dealing with or representing Greek Companies
in Kuwait to contact this Embassy as soon as
possible and to provide by fax or e-mail the following information: (Name of the company, tel
no, fax no, e-mail, type of business, name of
the Greek companies/clients). The Embassy’s
contacts are as follows: e-mail:
gremb.kuw@mfa.gr; fax: 24817103, and tel no:
24817100, 24817101, 24817102.
EMBASSY OF INDIA
On the occasion of the
Republic Day of India,
a Flag hoisting ceremony will be held at
the Embassy of India
premises on Arabian
Gulf Street at 9 am today. The flag hoisting will
be followed by the reading of the message of
the President of India, rendition of patriotic
songs by Indian school children, and an Open
House Reception. All Indian nationals in
Kuwait are cordially invited to attend the Flag
Hoisting Ceremony.
The Embassy of India has further revamped
and improved its Legal Advice Clinic at the
Indian Workers Welfare Center, and made the
free service available to Indian nationals on all
five working days, i.e. from Sunday to
Thursday every week. Kuwaiti lawyers would
be available at the Legal Advice Clinic daily
from Monday to Thursday, while Indian
lawyers would be available on Sundays.
Following are the free welfare services provided at the Indian Workers Welfare Center located at the Embassy of India: [i] 24x7 Helpline
for Domestic Workers: Accessible by toll free
telephone no. 25674163 from anywhere in
Kuwait, it provides information and advice
exclusively to Indian domestic sector workers
(Visa No. 20) as regards their grievances,
immigration and other matters. [ii] Help Desk:
It offers guidance to Indian nationals on routine
immigration, employment, legal, and other
issues (Embassy premises; 9 AM to 1 PM and
2 PM to 4.30 PM, Sunday to Thursday); (iii)
Labour Complaints Desk: It registers labor
complaints and provides grievance redressal
service to Indian workers (Embassy premises;
9 AM to 1 PM and 2 PM to 4.30 PM, Sunday
to Thursday); (iv) Shelters: For female and
male domestic workers in distress; (v) Legal
Advice Clinic: Provides free legal advice to
Indian nationals (Embassy premises; Kuwaiti
lawyers 3 PM to 5 PM, Monday to Thursday;
Indian lawyers 2 PM to 4 PM on Sunday); and
(vi) Attestation of Work Contracts: Private sector worker (Visa No. 18) contracts are accepted at the Embassy; 9 AM to 1 PM; Sunday to
Thursday; Domestic sector worker (Visa No.
20) contracts are accepted at Kuwait Union of
Domestic Labor Offices (KUDLO), Hawally,
Al-Othman Street, Kurd Roundabout, Al-Abraj
Complex, Office No 9, Mezzanine Floor; 9 AM
to 9 PM, Saturday to Thursday; 5 PM to 9 PM
on Friday.
EMBASSY OF PHILIPPINES
The Embassy of the
Philippines wishes to
inform the Filipino
community in the
State of Kuwait, that
the recent supreme
court decision to extend the registration of
voter’s applies only in local registration in the
Philippines under Republic Act no. 8189 and
does not apply to overseas voters which is governed by Republic Act no. 9189, hence it has
no impact on the plans and preparations on the
conduct of overseas absentee voting. The overseas absentee voting for presidential elections
will start on 10 April 2010 and will continue
uninterrupted until 10 May 2010 daily at the
Philippine Embassy. Registered overseas
absentee voters are advised to schedule their
days off in advance to avoid complications in
their schedules. Qualified voters are encouraged to get out and vote.

rominent Bangladeshi business man Jafar
Ahmed Chowdhury (President of
Chittagong Samity, Kuwait) organized an
annual winter camp at Juliah desert on 21st and
22nd January 2010. This camp was attended by
local community leaders with their families like
AG Mamun, Mafiz, Mahfuz, Shafiq, Haroun,
Shamsu, Ilyas, Jahangir, Faruk, TI Haroun,

P

Thouhid, Aziz Minto, Jasim, Alam, Muzammel,
Shajahan, Salim and many other distinguished people. The event started with the welcome speech
by Jafar and Nasima Jafar wishing everybody a
happy new year 2010 and was followed by nonstop
traditional and patriotic songs with classical dance
and music by the local Bangladeshi artists of
Baishaki Shiphi Group. Folk songs and gazals

were presented by Abul Kalam Azad and Zakir and
all the participants enjoyed the whole night by
dancing and singing with the singers and musicians. The second part of the event was outdoor
and indoor games which began on Friday morning
after breakfast. Games like volleyball, badminton,
cards, breeze, and running race etc were arranged.
The camp ended on a note of fun and excitement.

H

appy birthday to
Razak M Payyoli.

With loving greetings
from Mona Garnet and
Nathasha Garnet.

Tulukoota
holds blood
donation
campaign
ulukoota Kuwait is
organizing its first-ever
blood donation campaign on Friday 19th
February 2010. Donors registering with Tulukoota Kuwait
will be able to donate blood at
Central Blood Bank Jabriya on
Friday 19th February 2010
from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm.
Tulukoota Kuwait blood donation campaign aims to promote the spirit of “Share your
love & care with the society”.
If you feel passionately
towards contributing to this
noble cause, joins hands with
us by donating blood. Blood
donation won’t cost you anything but can bring back the
smiles on the face of a needy
patient. Blood donation is the
noblest cause as there is no
substitute for human blood,
although researchers have
been trying for decades to
develop an artificial substitute. From major surgeries to
treatment of critical diseases
all require blood transfusion.
Only blood form one person
can save another person. For
detailed information please
visit our website www.tulukootakuwait.org.
For registrations call: Ramesh
Kidiyoor - 97204716;
Chandrahasa Shetty 55941955; Mohammed Iqbal 99483350; Jayasheel Menezes
- 66230358; Mark Pinto 97937362.

T

FAIPS hosts mega carnival
he corridors of Fahaheel AlWatanieh Indian Private
School were abuzz with
activity and enthusiasm, as its students and teachers prepared to
host the Third Mega Carnival on
Saturday, 16th January 2010. The
day dawned bright and clear and

T

the FAIPS grounds were filled
with gaiety, exciting games stalls,
thrilling rides, face painting, baby
show, fancy dress show, music
and dance. Nearly 5,000 visitors
thronged the premises enjoying
the delectable eats, gyrating to
the DJ music and playing bingo.

The highlight of the evening was
the fashion show, where the parents ‘walked the ramp’. The occasion was graced by Nasser F AlKhaled, Vice President, Global
Capital Management Limited,
Anita Bukharey, Senior Operating
Co-ordinator, Al-Rayan Holding

Co and Hemant Agarwal, Chief
Finance Officer, Al-Rayan Holding
Co. Anju Dheman, Principal, staff
and students received deep appreciation and accolades from all corners for the ambience and organization of the Carnival. The
Souvenir which was made possi-

ble with the cooperation and good
wishes of well-wishers was
released, marking the efforts of
the publication team. The grand
finale of the evening was the
much awaited Raffle Draw, where
the patrons swept away over hundred prizes.

The Radisson Blu Hotel hosts party for kids

he Radisson Blu Hotel, Kuwait hosted the annual staff kids party this month. The children enjoyed the fun day with lots of games, face painting, colorful hair spraying, tattooing and clowns entertaining them throughout. The party was a huge success as it brought smiles on the faces of the children. Many gifts and prizes were distributed to the children by the management team of the Radisson
Blu Hotel, Kuwait.

POLICE STATION
Al-Madena Police Station
Al-Murqab Police Station
Al-Daiya Police Station
Al-Fayha始a Police Station
Al-Qadissiya Police Station
Al-Nugra Police Station
Al-Salmiya Police Station
Al-Dasma Police Station

24874330/9
CLINICS

Roudha

22517733

Adhaliya

22517144

Khaldiya

24848075

Keifan

24849807

Shamiya

24848913

Shuwaikh

24814507

Abdullah Salim

22549134

Al-Nuzha

22526804

Industrial Shuwaikh

24814764

Al-Khadissiya

22515088

Dasmah

22532265

Bneid Al-Ghar

22531908

Al-Shaab

22518752

Al-Kibla

22459381

Ayoun Al-Kibla

22451082

Al-Mirqab

22456536

Sharq

22465401

Salmiya

25746401

Jabriya

25316254

Maidan Hawally

25623444

Bayan

25388462

Mishref

25381200

W.Hawally

22630786

Sabah

24810221

Jahra

24770319

New Jahra

24575755

West Jahra

24772608

South Jahra

24775066

North Jahra

24775992

North Jleeb

24311795

Al-Ardhiya

24884079

Firdous

4892674

Al-Omariya

4719048

N.Kheitan

4710044

Rabiya

4732263

Fintas

3900322

THE PUBLIC
AUTHORITY FOR
CIVIL INFORMATION
Automated enquiry
about the Civil ID card is 1889988
AIRLINES

33
ACCOMMODATION
Sharing accommodation
available with a Keralite
Christian
family
in
Abbassiya with separate
bathroom in a C-A/C flat
from 26th January. Call:
99412951. (C 20241)
Room with attached bath
available in new C-A/C, two
bedroom, two toilet, flat in
Abbassiya, to share with Sri
Lankan couple. Contact:
66552905. (C 20245)
Two rooms available C-A/C
in Salmiya near Indian Public School, starting from 1st
Februry for single, couple or
working ladies. Contact:
97972920. (C 20240)
Accommodation available
in
Farwaniya
behind
Crowne Plaza in a flat, G.
floor, prefer Goan or Manglorean, rent KD 50. Contact: 97277454. (C 20242)
Sharing accommodation
available in Hawally behind
Dar Al Shifa hospital with
two bedroom + 2T, central
A/C and shaded car parking. Contact: 99485424.
(C 20243)
Sharing accommodation
available for Indian, working
ladies in a two bedroom, CA/C flat in Maidan Hawally,

A lady cook is needed to
work for a single Arab American man in an apartment
located in Salmiya. She
must know how to cook Arabic and Chinese food. The
job also requires light cleaning. Working hour is 2 pm to
8:30 pm. Salary is KD 100.
Tel: 66417504. (C 20244)
26-1-2010

activity come into play today. Work is concentrated
and steady. Broadening your intellectual and
spiritual horizons takes on a high priority. You are
intent on seeing the big picture and getting to the
point. It is a joy to know that things are looking up
in the finance and work areas of your life. Today you will have some
insight indicating that things are really going to improve—do not worry
about delays; they will pass. If you do not have a special love, you may
meet that person soon. If you do have a special loved one, you will find
many improvements within the relationship now. Even though the
weather may not be very good right now you may decide to barbecue on
an outdoor grill this evening. You will enjoy the evening.
Taurus (April 20-May 20) You feel that you are in touch

and in harmony with others; the lines of
communication are open today. There is a lot of gusto
behind what you say and think. You will receive a boost
plus some extra support from those around you and
this is a most encouraging day. Intensify your efforts with recycling now and
encourage others. Later today, nature plays a part in helping you to discover
the beauty in your life. An insight about your support system, your mother,
or other females may be important. You could discover a student or a young
person that opens up to you. If you are shopping this evening, be careful that
you do not overspend too much just now. This is not a good time to shop.
You could enjoy using your conscious effort to hug someone.

Pooch Cafe

ACROSS
1. (British) A waterproof raincoat made of rubberized fabric.
4. A particular geographical region of indefinite boundary (usually
serving some special purpose or distinguished by its people or culture
or geography).
8. A federally chartered savings bank.
11. A flat wing-shaped process or winglike part of an organism.
12. The last imperial dynasty of China (from 1644 to 1912) which was
overthrown by revolutionaries.
13. Fermented alcoholic beverage similar to but heavier than beer.
14. 1 species.
17. A colorless and odorless inert gas.
18. The blood group whose red cells carry both the A and B antigens.
22. The cry made by sheep.
23. An independent agency of the United States government
responsible for collecting and coordinating intelligence and
counterintelligence activities abroad in the national interest.
25. Title for a civil or military leader (especially in Turkey).
27. Being one hundred more than three hundred.
28. A tax on employees and employers that is used to fund the Social
Security system.
30. Large burrowing rodent of South and Central America.
32. A soft silvery metallic element of the alkali metal group.
33. The Mongol people living the the central and eastern parts of Outer
Mongolia.
37. A small cake leavened with yeast.
41. A branch of the Tai languages.
42. A federal agency established to coordinate programs aimed at
reducing pollution and protecting the environment.
46. A master's degree in business.
47. A river in north central Switzerland that runs northeast into the
Rhine.
48. (Babylonian) God of storms and wind.
49. Tag the base runner to get him out.
50. A machine-readable version of a standard dictionary.
51. A feeling of intense anger.
52. A loose sleeveless outer garment made from aba cloth.
DOWN
1. The arch of bone beneath the eye that forms the prominence of the
cheek.
2. (botany) Of or relating to the axil.
3. A compartment in front of a motor vehicle where driver sits.
4. Jordan's port.
5. Support resembling the rib of an animal.
6. Half the width of an em.
7. A soft white precious univalent metallic element having the highest
electrical and thermal conductivity of any metal.
8. A sheet or band of fibrous connective tissue separating or binding
together muscles and organs etc.
9. Being of delicate or slender build.
10. English monk and scholar (672-735).
15. Resinlike substance secreted by certain lac insects.
16. (Irish) Mother of the ancient Irish gods.
19. Having the wind against the forward side of the sails.
20. An enclosed space.
21. (Scotland) A small loaf or roll of soft bread.
24. Being one more than one.
26. A rare silvery (usually trivalent) metallic element.
29. A constellation in the southern hemisphere near Telescopium and
Norma.
31. An associate degree in applied science.
34. A genus of Lamnidae.
35. Cubes of meat marinated and cooked on a skewer usually with
vegetables.
36. Jordan's port.
38. South American armadillo with three bands of bony plates.
39. A lyric poet.
40. Tropical starchy tuberous root.
43. The sense organ for hearing and equilibrium.
44. 10 grams.
45. A lyric poem with complex stanza forms.

Gemini (May 21-June 20) Power struggles may take
place today—careful! Pay attention to the motives on
both sides. What do you think is at risk here? Take safety
precautions and go easy on caffeine—cold or hot drinks.
During days of stress when you are not able to express
yourself, the weight of a problem can be carried on your back. Perhaps you
can see how important it is to work through your feelings, say no when
necessary and work at a balance every day. Some projects could be more
costly in time and money than you would want to be involved with just
now—think before you obligate your time. Take time this evening to
refurbish or balance your energies—this could mean a movie, dinner out or
a poetry contest around the fireplace with family members.

Non Sequitur

Cancer (June 21-July 22) People that do not know
you may not recognize your strengths, especially since
your sensitivity is what usually shows. You may
appreciate a job that allows you freedom to grow at your
own pace. Some wonderful vocations in which you could
grow best would be the arts, astronomy, astrology, social work, design, radio
and television, law and among other things, literary work. If you are not
working in any of these professions, you might consider hobby or volunteer
work in these areas. When you have the freedom to express yourself you
can become very helpful to yourself as well as humanity. You may find
yourself probing and penetrating some strong internal changes. Remember,
however, that successful changes come in little steps. Smile
Leo (July 23-August 22) Your creative instincts are in
full gear today. You perform best when you compete with
yourself and you will be able to show off your skills
through some idea or problem solving technique. A sense
of emotional coolness or detachment at the personal
level, combined with an emphasis on philosophy is the nature of the cycle
you are now entering. It is ideas that count today, more than personal
concerns—this may mean that you are a writer and need particular ideas for
an article. You may be thinking about making a loved one jealous—don’t
bother, it will reflect badly on you. You will enjoy and value your own life
situation today. A visitor in your home this evening will want to stay longer
than necessary and will compliment you on your tastes—patience.

Zits

Virgo (August 23-September 22) You could be put in
charge of some project that requires your special skills
today. You may not have a choice here, but you need to
know that you will be able to handle whatever is put in
front of you. In fact, you may be able to acquire some help
if you ask before you begin a special project. Your mind will
be occupied with many thoughts and you could find that
your communication skills suffer this afternoon. You may find it very easy
to overdo or to become distracted. There is a sense of testing the limits.
This can result in a frustrating and stressful day. Relax . . . there is no
need to push. The evening is full of good times. You have a strong urge
for social activities with friends and may find yourself enjoying dinner
away from home.
Libra (September 23-October 22) This is an easy,
calm day that should find everything running smoothly.
Ideas and interaction with authority figures or older
people may be an important factor of this day. You will
learn from the past experiences of another how to create
some positive changes in your own life. Working with the unfolding events in
the work place today should be easy for you. This is a day to solve or complete
any unfinished business. You and a close friend or loved one may choose this
evening to talk about your investments or plan on how you will be saving for
a vacation. You and your lover may want to visit a book store, friends or just
enjoy some quiet time together. It is time you do things together and you will
be making plans to do more things together in the future.

Mother Goose and Grimm

Scorpio (October 23-November 21) Respect, status and

achievement are central goals for you. Creating a structure to
empower and maintain your ideals and principles become a
high priority, an article of faith. You are in charge today but it
may be difficult to know the exact rules. Your energies are up
and you are ready for taking charge. Do not pace the floor—
the people you lead will want to know you have confidence. Large items or real
estate may sell this afternoon—not necessarily on anyone’s time schedule, but
a real boost to the day! Ambition is a powerful motivation and properly
channeled—you will see results in achievements and recognition.
Unconventional, romantic and social connections are likely tonight. A proposal
or a commitment is in the works—if you want it.
Sagittarius (November 22-December 21) Your
intuition may be all you have to lead you in positive
directions—listen. You could find that you are
appreciated for your ability to act and get things
accomplished. Emphasize a balance of activities
throughout this year. You will feel more at-ease as you make a concentrated
effort to bring about a balance in all your affairs. Mental patterns and
communication skills play a major role in your life now. Real insight into your
own inner workings or psychology could surface in a manageable form.
Health matters come into play as you may want to work on building your
strength or stamina. Exercise a little bit every day—preferably, in some
movement that takes you somewhere like, bicycling, walking, etc. Enjoy a
little humming or whistling while you exercise.

may find that you really look forward to this
workday. A renewed appreciation for your work
may be apparent to your superiors—in fact, to
everybody. You also may be checking the stock
market, studying the gold market or looking for
the best investment. You will find a profitable way in which to invest if
you can get at least three opinions about your choices. Make a
conscious effort to bring a balance between family, friends and business.
We all become involved in exciting projects or ideas, but finding ways
to bring about a balance in your life will give you that feeling of havingit-all-together. You are most persuasive with others and articulate in
your speech and communication. This situation is a natural for selfexpression
Aquarius (January 20- February 18) You may find
yourself very appreciative of your career and practical
skills and you are ready for the workday to begin. A keen
interest in what makes things tick and who, or what pulls
the strings is the hallmark of the mental cycle that now
begins in your life. Sex, death and other of life’s ultimate
mysteries and taboos arouse your curiosity. Figuring out
ways to make your nest egg grow can be a preoccupation. You may feel
like opening up to some new creative venture this afternoon. Research
reveals that 80% of human communication is non-verbal and you may
become interested in learning or taking a course in body language. This
may even be fun to take with a friend or family member. There are
warm conversations around the dinner table tonight.
Pisces (February 19-March 20) Good feelings and a
sense of support and harmony make this a satisfying time.
You will find this particular Monday will move faster than
the average workday. There is plenty of work to keep you
busy. You could be most persuasive with others and influential in speech
and communication. It is ideas that count for you now, more than narrowly
personal concerns. The new, the unusual and the unorthodox—are things
that instinctively appeal to you and you may find new ways to perform
research or a new approach to other subjects of interest. This afternoon
you may relieve your loved one of certain responsibilities. You may even
consider trading responsibilities with a family member for a week—walk
in the other man’s shoes; so-to-speak.

The Simpsons
The King Of Queens
According To Jim
According To Jim
Ghost Hunters International
V.I.P.
Bones
One Day At A Time
Kyle Xy
Starsky & Hutch
Reaper
V.I.P.
How I Met Your Mother
The Bold And The Beautiful
7th Heaven
One Day At A Time
Bones
Starsky & Hutch
[V] Tunes

13:00
14:00
14:30
15:00

Ghost Hunters International
The Simpsons
The King Of Queens
According To Jim

Mel Gibson says
‘all guys are dogs’
he 54-year-old actor is very protective of his
daughters - married Hannah, 29, and baby
Lucia with his girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva because he knows what men are like and what
they are interested in. He told People magazine:
“Oh, you get scared. We all know what dogs all
guys are because we are guys.” Although Mel is
distrustful of any man’s intentions for his girls, the
actor acknowledges that women are far smarter
than guys give them credit for. Mel - who plays a
father who seeks revenge for his daughter’s murder in film ‘Edge of Darkness’ - added: “We

T

shouldn’t despair, the truth is all women are
smarter than men.” The Hollywood star is a very
protective father and partner and last week
revealed he keeps a gun “stowed away” in his
house to protect against intruders. The ‘Edge of
Darkness’ actor - who lives with Oksana and Lucia
- said: “I did have bodyguards for a little while but
it’s a drag. If your number’s up, it’s up. If I’m lying
in bed and somebody comes into my room, I’ll
either wake up or I won’t. And I’ll either hit ‘em
with my big stick that I’ve got or my gun that I
have stowed away... or they’ll hit me.”

Wentz wants to
move to France

Beth Ditto
always wanted
to be a ʻhippieʼ
he Gossip singer
was so moved by
Ozzy Osbourne’s
album ‘Crazy Train’ in the
1980, she wanted to join
the Peace Corps and live a
simple life helping others.
She said: “My mum was a
big rock fan and, growing
up, in the south as I did
there’s not too much to
choose from. I remember
being excited by Pink
Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ and
Patsy Cline. When I was a
kid I really wanted to

T

T

Winehouse to
remarry ex-husband

my Winehouse will remarry
Blake Fielder-Civil and have
children, according to a psychic.
Recovering drug addict Blake’s mother
Georgette Civil contacted celebrity
medium Denise Harrison, who did a
special reading to see what the future
holds for her son and his singer ex-wife.

A

The psychic claimed things will be positive for the couple and they will elope
to tie the knot for a second time when
Blake leaves rehab in Sheffield,
Northern England, next month. Denise
also stated they will go on a “spiritual
journey” together, but both will stay off
drugs. Georgette, 46, said: “I wanted to
know whether their future was going to
be positive. “Denise told me that they
are going to remarry very soon. It’s
going to be abroad. She said they would
always be together because of the huge
bond between them. “In the long-term
they are going to be free of drugs, go on
a spiritual journey, and they will live
happily and have children. “Spirits are
guarding Amy and Blake and want them
to have a happy future together.”
Meanwhile, Amy is currently staying in
a hotel after blowing the electrics in her
London home by playing loud music.
Amy, 26, and Blake, 31, originally wed
in May 2007 in Miami but divorced in
August 2009, after Blake filed for
divorce on grounds of adultery.

Cyrus joins the track’s all-star cast
iley Cyrus has also joined
the track’s all-star cast. Girls
Aloud singer Cheryl Cole
and British boy band JLS were the
first to record their vocals in London
over the weekend. The song is particularly poignant to JLS member
Oritse Williams, who has lost family
members in Haiti. He said: “This
tragedy is very close to my heart. We
hope to raise as much money as possible.” ‘Bleeding Love’ songstress
Leona Lewis paid a visit to a Los
Angeles studio , while Take That and
rocker Rod Stewart recorded in the
US. Alexandra Burke and Susan
Boyle are set to add their vocals this
afternoon, while James Morrison,
Mika and James Blunt will make
arrangements for their recordings
over the next few days. The individual vocals are being compiled by producer Steve Robson, using advanced
technology which means artists do
not need to record together.

M

Splitsville for Branjelina?
riends of the pair - who have been dating for five years and raise six children
together - insist “everything is fine”
between them and branded recent reports of a
break-up “totally false”. A source told the
New York Daily News newspaper: “I was told
it’s not true. They are very secretive. But I
was told it’s not true.” Although another
source called the split rumors “BS”, the couple are yet to officially comment on the status
of their relationship. The News of the World
newspaper claimed Brad, 46, and 34-year-old
Angelina had visited divorce lawyers to help
them separate and planned to split up in the
near future. The legal document they allegedly signed will see their $330 million fortune
halved in two, while the pair will have joint
custody of their children. The couple - who
have three adopted children, Maddox, eight,

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Pax, six, and Zahara, five, as well as three biological kids, Shiloh, three, and 18-month-old
twins Knox and Vivienne - are alleged to have
visited a top Los Angeles law firm in
December last year, and have since hired a
lawyer specializing in celebrity divorces.
Although the reports have been refuted, it has
since been claimed Brad’s brother Doug Pitt
begged the ‘Fight Club’ star to end the relationship because their family was being torn
apart. A source told The Sun newspaper:
“Brad’s family are being more vocal with their
doubts over the relationship. The only thing
they still have in common is their kids. That’s
keeping them together at the moment.” Brad
and Angelina - who has been married twice
before - got together after meeting on the set
of ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’ in 2004, while Brad
was still married to Jennifer Aniston.

Stewart to play a stripper

become a hippie and join
the Peace Corps, and that
was down to hearing the
Mamas and the Papas, but
the real soundtrack from
that era in my life was
Ozzy.” Since Gossip started in 2006, Beth has
become known for her
powerful-yet-unusual
voice and has seen musical
success around the world.
However, the 28-year-old
star struggled to find her
singing style when she
was young. She explained
to the Observer Music
Monthly magazine: “I
grew up singing in the
church choir, and had discovered that I was too loud
to sing prettily and too soft
to sing loud music. Then I
heard Tori Amos and she
validated my experience
as a singer along with
women like Missy Elliot.”

he Fall Out Boy rocker - who has a
14-month-old son Bronx Mowgli
with wife Ashlee Simpson-Wentz has fallen in love with the European country since flying out for music industry conference Midem. He revealed on twitter:
“In south france feeling the jet lag. I could
live here. France is amazing. The food.
The people.(sic)” The ‘Sugar We’re
Going Down’ hitmaker also spoke about
his love of Bronx, revealing him to be the
most important thing in his life. When
asked how fatherhood had affected him, he
replied: “he is the only person that can take
me away from my blackberry. the only thing i
want to get right in my entire life. (sic)” Last
year, Pete revealed he wanted to move out of
Los Angeles to protect his family’s privacy. He
said: “Once you have a kid it’s a little bit different.
You’re more protective. You want them to have a
normal life, or as normal as possible. “We’re going
to figure out moving somewhere that’s a little less
public.

risten Stewart plays a stripper in her new film. The
‘Twilight’ star portrays a 16year-old runaway who gets into erotic
dancing and occasional prostitution to
earn money in the movie - which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival

K

in Park City, Utah, on Saturday- and
Kristen admits it is a big departure for
her. She said: “My character’s not sultry, not sexy. She sort of throws herself into all her moves. I tore myself up
doing it.” The 19-year-old actress is
seen dancing in platform heels, fish-

nets, a micro-mini skirt and a bra in
one scene and the actress was nervous
about shooting the sequence with costar James Gandolfini. She added: “The
first time I put on all the fishnets I was
nervous. I really tried to own it
though.” Kristen trained with a profes-

Keith Richards has given up alcohol
he Rolling Stones guitarist
- who is known for his hell
raising lifestyle - hasn’t
downed a drink in four months,
despite previously claiming he
would never become teetotal. A
source close to the 66-year-old
musician said: “There’s no guarantees that he’ll stay off it - but
he’s doing really well so far. “He
has always quite enjoyed the fact
that he seemed to be able to

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carry on drinking as much as he
liked with no real negative
impact on his health.” It is
believed Keith decided to quit
booze after seeing his band mate
Ronnie Wood start drinking
heavily again and eventually split
from his wife of 23 years Jo to run
off with 21-year-old cocktail waitress Katia Ivanova, who Ronnie
is also now separated from. The
source added to The Sun newspa-

per: “He has watched Ronnie fall
well and truly off the wagon last
year and he doesn’t like what he
sees. “Plus he has started to feel
for the first time like it might do
him some good to give up the
booze for a while.” Four years
ago Keith suffered a brain hemorrhage after he fell out of a tree
while partying on the Pacific
island of Fiji, but made a full
recovery. —Bang Showbiz

sional stripper for two weeks to prepare for the movie and initially wanted
to learn the sexy moves covered up.
Speaking to Us Weekly magazine, she
said: “I wanted to do it in my clothes.
But my trainer was like, ‘No, you don’t
stick to the poll when you do that.’ “

SPECTRUM

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

37

Music & Movies

Stone says US in denial over JFK assassination
ollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone said yesterday the United States remains in denial
over the possibility that someone other than
Lee Harvey Oswald could have assassinated John F
Kennedy, calling it a “national fairy tale.” Speaking
to 300 high school students in the Thai capital,
Bangkok, Stone said exploring alternative theories
over the JFK assassination remains too sensitive for

H

US film director Oliver Stone holds
a souvenir during a presentation at
a hotel in Bangkok.—AFP

those in the media or academia who “would be
endangering their careers and their position.” “To
this day, many key Americans in power are in total
denial about this story,” Stone said.
“They don’t even want to know about the possibility that he was killed by someone other than Lee
Harvey Oswald. It is a national fairy tale.” Stone
was in Bangkok to talk about filmmaking and peace
as part of a series of talks facilitated by the Viennabased International Peace Foundation. His 1991 film
“JFK,” which he acknowledged was his most controversial, ridicules the Warren Commission conclusion that Oswald acted alone and suggests a massive
conspiracy. Stone’s film centered on a theory by
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that a
CIA-led mutiny killed the president and the plotters
walked away unscathed. Garrison’s theories went
to court in 1967, but Clay Shaw, the alleged “evil
genius” behind the assassination, was acquitted.
Stone said yesterday he thought it was “a good
thing” to revisit the JFK assassination. But he came
under fire from the historians and film reviewers who
contended Stone had fudged facts, invented characters and elevated speculation to truth to support his
burning belief that the killing was a high-level conspiracy. “It’s an amazing story and I did it,” Stone
said. “I thought I would be respected for it, and I was
lambasted in the establishment press. I was called a
myth-maker, a propagandist. I didn’t see it coming. I
thought the Kennedy murder was safe.” Stone is
famous for several other movies, including the
Vietnam War films “Born on the Fourth of July” and
“Platoon,” and “World Trade Center,” about two
policemen buried in the rubble of the twin towers
after the Sept 11 attacks. “Platoon” won four Oscars,
including best picture and best director. —AP

American
film director
Oliver Stone,
center, poses
for a picture
with students
at the end of
his talks with
students at
an international school
as part of a
one-day visit
to promote
world peace
in Bangkok,
Thailand,
yesterday.
—AP

Kristen Stewart gets dirty in fishnets, g-string
magine a film copyrightclearance lawyer’s absolute
worst nightmare. It could
look
something
like
“Logorama,” an Oscar-shortlisted animated short that screened
at the Sundance Film Festival.
French filmmakers Francois
Alaux, Herve de Crecy and
Ludovic Houplain spent four
years creating a violent, profane, action-packed caper set in
a world comprised entirely of
well-known corporate logos and
iconic mascots.
How familiar are the stars?
An evil Ronald McDonald goes
on a shooting spree on a street
overflowing with 7-Elevens and
U-Hauls and Wal-Marts and
Pizza Huts. The Michelin Men
are bumbling, foul-mouthed
cops on his trail. Bob’s Big Boy
picks his nose and flings it on an
unsuspecting victim. The entertaining 17-minute ride effectively satirizes the global corporate
culture and our scary familiarity
with the tools of pervasive marketing. But why has no lawyer
for any of the hundreds of copyrights and trademarks featured
in the film tried to shut it down?
After the screening, two of the
filmmakers were asked if any
brands had attempted to stop it.
“Not yet,” they answered, a
bit nervously. “We hope there’s
no CEO of McDonald’s here
tonight.” It’s an interesting
legal question. The film is clearly satire, and a casual viewer
can tell the brands are used to
send up corporate oversaturation. But considering the millions of dollars invested in a
character
like
Ronald
McDonald, seeing him dropping
f-bombs on a murderous rampage made us wonder whether
the satire crossed over into disparagement.
The movie’s audience has
been so small, it’s probably not
on the agenda in corporate
boardrooms, but that could
change if it wins the best animated short at the Academy
Awards in March. Who knows,
maybe the in-house lawyers
will play along with the joke.
The filmmakers said they heard
from one brand executive who
was just happy that his company’s logo was featured prominently in the center of town. It’s
unlikely that executive was a
lawyer. —Reuters

wilight” fans are
in for a shock.
Beautiful, virginal
Bella Swan has morphed into
a smoking, cussing 16-yearold New Orleans
stripper/sex worker marked
with bruises and scars
named Mallory. Or Alison,
actually. Kristen Stewart,
who has drawn legions of
devoted followers as
“Twilight’s” conflicted protagonist, flips that portrayal
on its head with “Welcome to
the Rileys,” the very R-rated
indie drama that premiered
at the Sundance Film
Festival Saturday.
Stewart is raw, feral,
feisty and utterly believable
in ways that should remind
everyone that she has chops
well beyond teenaged vampire soap operas. On Sunday,
she starred in the premiere
of “The Runaways,” which is
slotted for a March release
through Apparition, the indie
banner behind “The Young
Victoria.” That should seal
the deal for any doubters.
Unfortunately, Stewart’s
younger fans are unlikely to
see “Rileys,” since it features a pot-smoking Stewart
tossing off sexually explicit
lines often delivered in various stages of undress-or in
her dancing get-up at the
Dixie Divas club, including
red Xs taped across her
breasts, fishnets, a g-string
and five-inch heels.
All of this is couched in a
melancholy story about a
middle-aged Indianapolis
couple played by James
Gandolfini and Melissa Leo
numbed by the death of
their daughter who eventually become entangled with
Stewart’s Alison in New
Orleans in a misguided
effort to “save” her. Stewart
was on-hand after the
screening, hooded, arms
crossed, and struggled to
articulate just how she lived
with the character and
learned to understand what
her life was like. As is often
the case with Stewart’s public appearances, her intense
efforts to verbalize her
thoughts came off as endearing. Regardless, the excited
pre-show chatter and fawning audience members
proved that Stewart’s star is
unlikely to be tarnished anytime soon. —Reuters

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The Sundance
movie no lawyer
should see

I

From left, Kristen Stewart, Joan Jett, Dakota Fanning and Cherie Currie pose together at
the premiere of the film ‘The Runaways’ at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah,
Sunday. —AP

Hoffman sets sail with
directing debut ʻBoatingʼ
Hoffman already has achieved
or his feature directing
indie “brand” status, so this
debut, Philip Seymour
shouldn’t be too difficult.
Hoffman doesn’t wander
Hoffman plays Jack, a limo
far off the reservation. “Jack
driver who rarely ventures outGoes Boating” is based on Bob
side the shell of his job. His cirGlaudini’s play that Hoffman’s
cle of friends consists of exactly
theater troupe, LAByrinth, protwo-fellow driver Clyde (Ortiz)
duced off-Broadway with
and his wife, Lucy (RubinHoffman and fellow ar tistic
Vega). He, in fact, becomes
director John Ortiz starring
their project. They mean to
alongside third actor in both
bring him out of that shell by
productions, Daphne Rubinsetting him up with Lucy’s coVega. Within such a comfort
worker at a Brooklyn funeral
zone, Hoffman emerges as a
parlor, Connie (Amy Ryan).
confident film director with
Actually, both Jack and Connie
visual flair and, no surprise, a
are projects since Connie
remarkable ability to maximize
seems ter rified of men and
his fellow actors’ work.
relationships despite her long“Boating” is an offbeat relationship piece focusing on mar- Philip Seymour Hoffman, right, making ing to become involved. A natuginal characters among the his feature film directorial debut with ral timidity only increases her
working class, people who look ‘Jack Goes Boating,’ poses with cast suspicions about men.
To get anywhere with
with considerable fear or regret member Salvatore Inzerillo. —AP
Connie, Jack is going to need
at their lives. There aren’t
lessons. When he learns that
mentally challenged or stupid.
In fact, they are quite bright. They just a Sundance kind of movie, so its distrib- Connie would love to go boating-it’s
never got or perhaps misplaced the utor, Overture Films, will have to mar- the dead of winter, so he has many
handbook telling them how to charge ket it as such. Its quirks and insights months to prepare-he takes swimming
ahead in life. In a sense, this is an are heartfelt but must play to the right lessons from Clyde. When Connie
updated version of Paddy Chayefsky’s audience, where Hoffman’s delicate expresses a desire for someone to cook
award-winning 1950s teleplay and later craftsmanship as an actor and director her dinner, Jack takes culinary lessons
screenplay, “Marty.” This is very much will be appreciated. For tunately, from a chef. —Reuters

F

British band Hot Chip
returns with ʻOne Life Standʼ
P

olite and nattily dressed, Alexis
Clarke and Owen Taylor are the rare
musicians who show up early for an
interview. But then again, most of the
members of UK act Hot Chip defy expectations. They’ve been called everything
from synth pop to indie pop to alternative
dance, but the truth lies somewhere in the
intersection of all three. “We don’t tend to
settle down in one style,” Clarke says.
“Our only goal when we record is to move
forward; we don’t want to change the
sound too much, but we want to develop.”
The development is clear on the band’s
new release, “One Life Stand,” which

comes out Feb 1 in the United Kingdom on
Parlophone/EMI and Feb 2 in the United
States on Astralwerks. While the new
album is less dancey and more contemplative than Hot Chip’s previous releases,
representatives behind the release on both
sides of the Atlantic are confident the
band’s fan base will stick around.
Astralwerks general manager/executive VP of marketing Glenn Mendlinger
says that the band’s greatest strength is its
large touring base, which is rare for many
UK acts in the States. “A lot of bands
come from overseas and do what I call a
‘UK tour in the US’-they play eight mar-

kets and then disappear,” he says. “Hot
Chip were willing to spend the time over
here, and it really helped them.” The band
has lined up a US tour that includes slots
at key festivals during the spring and summer.
But time spent stateside doesn’t mean
Hot Chip will neglect its countrymen. The
act will tour the UK in February, concluding with two nights, Feb 26 and 27, at the
5,000-capacity London O2 Academy
Brixton. It will also reach its European
audience with 10 dates in Holland,
Belgium, France, Germany and Italy in
March. —Reuters

Iraq drama ʻThe
Hurt Lockerʼ wins
Oscars indicator

raq war drama “The
Hurt Locker” scooped
top prize at the
Producers Guild of America
(PGA) Awards on Sunday,
a key awards season event
that offers clues of possible Oscars contenders. The
low-budget independent
movie about a maverick US
army bomb disposal expert
won the Darryl F. Zanuck
producer of the year award
after being overlooked at
the Golden Globes and the
Screen Actors Guild
Awards.
Six of the past nine winners of the accolade have
gone on to win the best
picture prize at the
Academy Awards, which
will take place in
Hollywood this year on
March 7. Nominations for

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the Oscars are announced
on February 2. Victory for
“The Hurt Locker” thrust
the film firmly back into
contention in the race for
the Oscars’s best picture
prize after science fiction
blockbuster “Avatar” had
emerged as an early
favorite following last
week’s Golden Globes.
“Avatar” was among the
other beaten nominees for
the PGA Awards top honor,
which also included
“District 9,” “An
Education,” “Inglourious
Basterds,” “Invictus,”
“Precious,” “Star Trek,”
“Up” and “Up in the Air.”
The PGA Awards best animated film went to Pixar’s
“Up” while the best documentary honor went to
“The Cove.” —AFP

James Mitchell dead at 89
S
actor
James
Mitchell, who became
widely known for his
role as Palmer Cortlandt on
the long-running ABC show
“All My Children,” has died at
the age 89, The Los Angeles
Times reported yesterday.
The newspaper said Mitchell
had died Friday at CedarsSinai Medical Center in Los
Angeles of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease complicated by pneumonia.
Mitchell joined “All My
Children” in 1979, playing a
self-made millionaire who
loves his family. His final
appearance was earlier this
month for the show’s 40th
anniversary episode, the
report said.
He was nominated for seven Daytime Emmy Awards for
his role in the soap opera.

U

Mitchell was born on
February 29, 1920, in
Sacramento, California, The
Times said. In the course of
his career, he had leading
roles in such Broadway musicals as “Bloomer Girl,”
“Billion
Dollar Baby,”
“Brigadoon” and “Paint Your
Wagon.” —AFP

SPECTRUM

38
Fashion

Paul Smith concludes Paris’
menswear shows in rock-style
aul Smith delivered
more of the dandifiedyet-rock ‘n’ roll suits
that have come to define his
very British brand, and Parisbased designer Josephus
Thimister made his “grand
retour” after a years-long
absence with the season’s
first couture show-which
included starkly beautiful
cocktail dresses and evening
gowns with a sprinkling of
military-inspired men’s looks.
Other shows Sunday included
the Paris debut of the United
Arab Emirate’s Khalid Al
Qasimi, whose Qasimi label
was on-trend with its chunky
sweaters while forging its own
path with Mao-collared dress
shirts embellished with drop
pearls.
France’s Romain Kremer
added a welcome dose of science fiction weirdness, with
neon orange sunglasses that
swept upward into a forehead
panel and parkas covered in
tiny rubber tentacles that
shook as the models walked,
like the grasping of coral’s
phalanges. Emanuel Ungaro,
the storied but struggling
French label, presented a collection of sportscoats fitted
with fine metal wires that
allow them to hold their shape
and luxury sweatpants in
cashmere with clever origami
closures instead of drawstrings.
High-end sweatpants and
longjohns emerged as the
fashion-forward man’s legwear of choice for next fall.
Labels from Louis Vuitton to
Jean Paul Gaultier and Belgian
critical darling Dries Van
Noten paired slouchy leggings
with razor-cut blazers to create the sartorial variation on
the mullet: Business on the
top, couch potato from waist
down. Comfy pieces were big
winners, in general. Snugly
grandpa cardigans were layered under and at times over
suits-which were sometimes
sheered of their fussy buttons
in the name of comfort.
Footwear, however, was
another story. Chunky midcalf boots, from combat- to
motorcycle-boots, dominated
Paris’ runways-often with slim
cut trousers tucked into them.
Most designers worked in a
somber palette of black and
charcoal, with some oatmeal
thrown in for good measure,
but fans of citrus shades and
rich jewel tones will find plenty to choose from at Galliano,
Kenzo and Paul Smith.
Though the City of Light’s
menswear shows ended on
Sunday, much the international fashion glitteratti will stay
on for the haute couture displays, which run through
Wednesday. For their couture
collection, those labels with
the means dig deep into their
pockets to allow the creative
juices free rein and showcase
their savoir faire through
extravagant, handmade dresses that cost as much as a
(very expensive) car. On
Monday, luxury giants Dior
and Armani field their springsummer 2010 couture collections.

P

PAUL SMITH
This man just won’t let the
music die. The eccentric Brit,
who got his start hawking Tshirts to the likes of The
Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd
back when they were newcomers, delivered an anarchic
collection steeped in vintage
rock ‘n’ roll attitude. The
looks were all over the place.
Models-including some
musicians culled from French
and British bands for the
occasion-sported mismatched
suits in Harris tweeds, layers
of chunky sweaters, and
shawl-collared jackets and
bowler hats or knit caps.
They clunked down the catwalk in combat boots or
padded softly in velvet dressing slippers and were draped
in scarves, with punk touches
like safety pin earrings.
There were also period-looking pieces, including swishing
greatcoats that channeled
Sherlock Holmes and Oliver
Twist-like knickers paired
with slim velvet jackets.
“When you’re a clothes
designer, you’ll often try to
work on a theme to help your
assistant designers and even-

tually help your sales people.
But if a theme doesn’t come
naturally, it’s very dangerous
to do it,” Smith told The AP.
“This time, I just thought of
my history-when I started at
18 years old selling T-shirts
to rock bands-and do things I
thought a lot of rock stars of
all ages would wear.” It was
easy to imagine David Bowie
in the series of slim, monochrome suits in plum, teal or
electric blue, or Patty Smithwhom the designer says
often buys pieces from his
menswear collection-in the
lozenge lapeled jackets and
slouchy black trousers.
JOSEPHUS THIMISTER
For his return after an
extended hiatus, Thimister-a
former Balanciaga designer
who is of Russian, Belgian
and French origin-looked to
the bloodbath that was World
War I for this collection of
simple-lined ball gowns in sil-

Models present
creations by
Dutch designer
Josephus
Thimister for
Dior during the
Autumn/Winter’s
2010-2011
ready-to-wear
(French PAP)
women’s
collection show
on January 24,
2010 in
Paris. —AFP
ver and gold, red beaded
cocktail dresses and full
skirts in military drab worn
with soldiers’ coats, satin
sashes or mesh tank tops
splattered in faux scarlet
bloodstains. The show interspersed menswear looksreinterpretations of the uniforms of Russian Cossack
troops, modeled by male
models-with the couture
pieces. Often the men’s and
women’s looks mirrored one
another, as with the his-andhers versions of the red satin
pant suit that opened the
show.
Bursts of applause rang
out from the audience-a sign
of appreciation at Paris’ rarified made-to-measure showsafter many of the looks.
Standouts included a cocktail
dress in olive silk with a
cape-let that transformed into
a dramatic train and ball
gowns made from woven gold
ribbons. Another gown,
which appeared to be made
from the kind of foil blankets
rescuers hand out after a disaster, made loud crunching
and crackling sounds and the
model tottered down the runway. The show ended with all
the models, men and women
alike, donning pilots’ jumpers
for the final lap. —AP
See Page 39

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

39

SPECTRUM

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Fashion

Tricksters of the cleavage:

Bra-makers push up and up
ras top the list of fashion items
that magically change the way
women look. Ask Poupie Cadolle,
whose company invented the bra and
who has unparalleled expertise in pushing, squeezing and flattering breasts. Or
ask Monica Bellucci, Sophie Marceau or
Sharon Stone, dressed by Cadolle for
films or magazine covers to bring out the
best of their torsos. “I’m fashion’s top
cheat,” says the bright-eyed blonde of 63,
the fifth generation of women at the helm
of a family firm known for made-to-measure bras at a cool 640 euros (902 dollars)
a piece.
In pride of place by the company
entrance is Cadolle’s 1889-patented braancestor of the artful cleavage unveiled at
the same venue and at the same time as
Paris’ Eiffel Tower. Initially called a “WellBeing”, then a “Chest Corset”, it was
advertised as “providing support for the

B

abdomen while leaving the stomach free”.
“It didn’t sell very well,” Cadolle said in
an interview. “Bras only really took off
years later.” Like other top French lingerie labels Simone Perele and Chantelle,
Cadolle started off as a specialist corsetmaker. At a time when many fashion
brands have been gobbled by conglomerates, these three leading bra-makers
remain in family hands.
“What we do is based on know-how,”
Adeline Desjonquieres, who manages the
Chantelle brand, told AFP. “Corsetry is
close to couture, we have generations of
know-how behind us.” “We magnify the
body, we perfect the silhouette, we help
to cheat,” she said of push-up and padded
bras and the other tricks of corsetry.
Leaders of these French corsetry dynasties are true believers in the bra-in its
virtues and its quality and cut as well as
its beauty. “People forget that the whole

point of a bra is to provide support,” said
Cadolle. “It is there to stop the sagging
that comes if breasts bounce about due to
poor straps or loose cups and material.”
Concern over sagging bosoms is
such that British label Freya has extended its cup sizes from the routine A to D
right up to a K to give women more
depth. It also now has a special fitting
expert who travels to lingerie boutiques
across Europe to help saleswomen help
clients choose the right bra. “More and
more young women need bigger sizes yet
four out five women don’t even know
their bra size,” said Freya’s Marie-Laure
Vasquez. “The right size means better
posture and less strain on the back.”
Freya, which is also bent on producing attractive models in large sizes, has
been named the top 2010 lingerie designer by Paris’ Salon International de la
Lingerie, taking place this month.

Underwear, said organisers of the Salon,
is poised to sell three percentage points
better than outer wear in 2010 despite
the crisis. And women aged 45 to 54
have outstripped 20-year-olds as lingerie’s top buyers. “They buy better
labels and look for better-made bras,” said
Cecile Vivier, manager of the Salon.
“There is demand for know-how and people are ready to pay the price.” Bras are
complicated things, however, made of a
total 14 different components-from hooks
to lace to elastic-and 11 to 18 pieces of
fabric. “Bras are very complicated and
each woman is different,” said Cadolle of
her Rolls-Royce-like models made of 16
pieces of fabric.
After panty-hose in the 70s almost
destroyed the girdle and garter business”the bottom half of corsetry”-the feminist
onslaught against the bra all but razed the
entire trade to the ground, she said.

“Women were supposed to go out and
conquer the world without nice undies,”
added Cadolle. “The bra was vilified, it
became well-behaved and very very dull.
It was no longer supposed to be pretty, or
lacey, particularly in North America.”
More than half of France’s lingerie makers went bust at the time, but Cadolle,
then run by her ageing mother, continued
to turn out sophisticated undies with
plenty of lace for a faithful if shrinking
clientele.
To sell her custom-made models,
Poupie Cadolle nowadays travels to Dubai
and New York several times a year, measuring up customers, returning for fittings,
and finally sending the finished item
through the post. “They might be expensive but no two women are the same and,
if washed properly, a good bra can provide
the proper support for a couple of years.”
“Today young Russian women are replac-

Models
present
creations by
French
designer
Christophe
Josse during
the springsummer 2010
haute couture
collection
show
yesterday in
Paris.—AFP

Models display creations by British designer Paul Smith as part of the Men ready-to-wear
Autumn-Winter 2010-2011 fashion shows in Paris, on January 24, 2010. —AFP

ing our American clientele of the 1920s,”
the era when well-heeled American
women sailed the Atlantic to pour into
Paris for the jazz, the clubs, the jewellery
and the clothes.
In those days, Cadolle had a staff of
600 who might spend 200-300 hours
stitching together a night-dress for the
wives of Indian Maharajas or members of
the dwindling Ottoman court. It also
owned a long stretch of the up-market
street in the heart of Paris where it now
runs a lone boutique. Though times are
hard, France’s bra dynasties remain optimistic for the future. “France still has a
reputation for refinery and elegance, and
we are surviving,” says Cadolle, who
hopes for a return of the pointy bra, the
kind of breast flaunted by Brigitte Bardot
in the 50s and 60s. Says Desjonquieres:
“By flattering a woman’s body we help
her express her femininity.” —AFP

www.kuwaittimes.net

Did Johnny Depp die?
ans are angr y and grieved
over the rumors of Johnny
Depp’s death. The r umors
about the death of Johnny Depp
were originated through a web hosting website which uploaded a fake
report by CNN. Many other website
also published the news of Johnny
Depp’s death and gave references to

F

the CNN report uploaded on the site
which was the origin of this hoax.
Yes, it was a hoax! Whoever read
the news and the fake CNN page
didn’t notice the date mentioned on
that page - it was dated March 2004.
If you read the CNN news article
carefully, you will notice that it mentions the death of some Johnny

Depp who had remained an actor in
past, as the article uses the phrase
‘former actor’ in the news article.
So, it implies that a person
named Johnny Depp, who had
remained an actor in some theater,
died in a car crash in a small country town of France. Furthermore,
the CNN news article dated 2004 is

quite confusing as the article suddenly changes the story line.
First it talks about the death of
some Johnny Depp and then suddenly moves to a story about some
cavers from British Navy. So, to all
those Johnny Depp fans who are
grieving over his death, we want
you to relax as it was just an hoax.

The news article of CNN, which
is being referred to by those who
have created this hoax, is about the
death of some other Johnny Depp
and the news story is dated 2004.
So, with this explanation about
Johnny Depp’s death hoax, we hope
that his fans will now be at peace!www.shnock.com

New York woman falls, rips Picasso painting
significant Pablo Picasso painting was damaged after a woman
attending art class lost her balance, fell into “The Actor” and tore it,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art said.
The unusually large canvas, measuring
77.25 by 45.38 inches (196 by 115 centimeters), sustained a vertical tear of
about six inches (15 centimeters) in
the lower right-hand corner in the
accident on Friday. The museum, located on the eastern edge of New York’s
Central Park, did not elaborate on why
the woman fell.
But The Met said the damage did
not impact the “focal point of the composition” and that it should be repaired
in the coming weeks ahead of a major
Picasso retrospective featuring some
250 works at the museum opening on
April 27. Repair work should be “unobtrusive,” it added. Painted in the winter of 1904-1905, the work hails from
Picasso’s critical Rose Period, when
the artist shifted from the downbeat
tones of his Blue Period to warmer,
more romantic hues.
The period also hints at Picasso’s
later embrace of abstraction with his
signature cubist style. Donated to The
Met by automobile heiress Thelma
Chrysler Foy in 1952, “The Actor” features an acrobat striking a dramatic
pose against an abstract backdrop. It
was painted on a used canvas that
already contained a painting.—AFP

A

Picasso’s ‘The Actor’ was painted in the winter of
1904-’05 - and damaged by a clumsy art lover 105
years later.

Indonesia mulls tearing down Obama statue
ndonesian authorities said yesterday they are considering a petition
to tear down a statue of US
President Barack Obama as a boy,
only a month after the bronze was
unveiled in Jakarta. The statue of
“Little Barry”-as Obama was known
when he lived in the capital in the
late 1960s-stands in central Jakarta’s
Menteng Park, a short walk from the
US president’s former elementary
school. Critics say the site should
have been used to honor an
Indonesian and 55,000 people have
joined a page on social networking
website Facebook calling for the statue to be removed.
“We’ve been discussing for the
past two weeks what to do with the
statue... whether to take it down,
move it elsewhere or retain it. We’re
finding the best solution,” Jakarta
parks agency official Dwi Bintarto
said. Obama, who was born in Hawaii,
lived for four years as a child in
Jakarta from 1967 after his divorced
mother married an Indonesian. The
bronze was designed by Indonesian
artists and depicts the boy Obama
dressed in shorts and a T-shirt with a
butterfly perched on his hand.
“The statue is of Obama as a child,
not as the US president. His relatives

I

and friends who erected it said it’s
meant to motivate children to study
hard and dream big,” Bintarto said.
Members of the “Take Down the
Barack Obama Statue in Menteng
Park” group on Facebook say Obama
has done nothing for Indonesia.
“Barack Obama has yet to make a significant contribution to the Indonesian
nation. We could say Obama only ate
and shat in Menteng. He spent his
subsequent days living as an
American,” the web page says.
“For the dignity of a sovereign
nation, Barack Obama’s monument in
Menteng Park must be removed
immediately.” The childhood connection and his knowledge of a few words
of Indonesian made Obama popular in
the mainly Muslim country of 234 million people. Obama said in November
he would visit Indonesia this year
along with First Lady Michelle Obama
and daughters Malia and Sasha.—AFP

A bronze statue of a young
US President Barack
Obama stands in a public
park, a short walk from his
former elementary school
in Jakarta yesterday.—AFP